Tom Ridge: Cyber risk approach to include patrolling dark side of the web

Tom Ridge, chairman of Ridge Insurance Solutions, delivers the keynote as Advisen’s Cyber Risk Insights Conference in New York.

NEW YORK–The first head of the US Department of Homeland Security—now chairman of a cyber insurance company that bears his name—said a proactive approach to “looking for the bad actors” needs to be an integral part cybersecurity and risk management.

Tom Ridge, fresh off announcing the beginnings of Ridge Insurance Solutions, told a packed conference room here during the keynote at Advisen’s Cyber Risk Insights Conference that his intelligence partners were “actively roaming the dark side of the web” to identify the black hats.

He called this “real cyber intelligence,” adding that enterprises need to “understand the problem they are trying to manage” and “combat the cyber threat.”

Launching into his new role as a salesman, the former governor of Pennsylvania said his company employs “game-changing technology” to assess clients’ networks without disruption. In hours, he claims, this tool can look at problems within a network to determine insurability and/or suggest mitigating actions. Companies should be incentivized to adopt “total resiliency management” with customizable insurance policy and price.

The ubiquity of the Internet, Ridge continued, is its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The speed and scale of cyber risk is unlike anything. “A year from now [the risk] will not be the same. The digital sun will never set,” Ridge said. Meanwhile, data and surveys used in underwriting are “grossly insufficient,” he added.