Cybersecurity insurance provider Cowbell Cyber Inc. has announced the Cowbell Connector for Microsoft, enabling policyholders to manage cyber risk proactively within their Microsoft environments.

Cowbell said the connector provides its customers with more direct visibility into the deployment of security best practices on Microsoft Corp.’s Azure cloud, along with real-time recommendations to improve any weaknesses it discovers.

Cowbell is a specialist cyber insurance firm that offers coverage in case a company suffers a data breach. Its approach amasses data from numerous external sources such as threat databases and dark web catalogs and combines it with information provided by the insured companies through security aggregators, which are third parties that capture customers’ log data to detect anomalies.

With the Cowbell Connector for Microsoft, customers will be able to activate the use of “inside-out data and risk signals” from Microsoft SecureStore. The connector was built using Microsoft’s standard application programming interfaces and leverages Cowbell Factors, a proprietary risk rating score that’s used to guide underwriters. As such, Cowell says, it can perform a much deeper risk assessment across customers’ Microsoft 365 environments, including tools such as Outlook and Teams.

Cowbell said recent analysis of its own policyholders shows that those who activated the Cowbell Connector to Microsoft showed “significant improved risk ratings” as measured by its Cowbell Factors tool. In addition, it said 83% of customers who activated the Cowbell Connector for Microsoft boosted their cyber risk ratings by an average of five points.

Tara Knapp, senior business development & strategy manager, of Microsoft Security and Compliance, said cyber insurance has become an “essential tool” for helping organizations boost their resilience against cyberattacks. “We applaud Cowbell for prioritizing visibility and transparency into concrete steps that businesses can take to become better protected and more insurable,” she said.

Cowbell said its connectors don’t just help organizations to boost their security profile, but also enable them to find the best policy to meet their needs. The connectors can also help to lower customers’ premiums by up to 5% because of the reduced risk. Cowbell offers connectors for multiple other cloud computing and collaboration tools, including Google Cloud.

Image: Cowbell Cyber