By Alvito Vaz
Maintaining a secure environment is more than just implementing technology solutions. People play a key role in preventing security breaches. As organizations share more information online the risk of exposure grows exponentially with each new connection. The human aspect of security training for a single company is daunting let alone trying to do this across different business organizations.
Independent agents work with an average of 10 to 12 different carriers. Today each carrier is
implementing security practices to maintain its own security connectivity. However, for the agency this adds operational burdens and, in my observation, also reduces the overall channel security. AI-enhanced cybersecurity attacks can collect and evaluate large volumes of data. With artificial intelligence (AI)
the risk for a breach, by finding a single weak link in the security chain, is greater.
Earlier this year the federal government consolidated access to multiple functions under a single authentication method. They communicated “Login.gov is your one government account for simple, secure, and private access to participating government agencies.” This common authentication is used by government, employment and healthcare departments. Yes, you can use a common login to work with the Internal Revenue Service, verify your identity for employment and access your Social Security account.
Like the federal government we could improve security by consolidating authentication across the independent agent channel. This is the “people” part of cybersecurity, and your participation is necessary. ID Federation, an industry nonprofit, founded by peers in the insurance industry allows agents to use their agency management system credentials to access carrier portals. This is a federated security process and can utilize multifactor authentication (MFA) to eliminate the need to enter an ID, password, or MFA at a carrier portal.
The two largest management systems — Vertafore and Applied Systems — are members of ID Federation. Carriers, we need your participation in ID Federation. Agents, encourage your carriers to join ID Federation and implement SignOn® Once. Carrier and agent support is critical to improving cybersecurity across the channel.
SignOn Once is ID Federation’s primary initiative. For more information visit www.idfederation.org or contact me at alvito@idfederation.com.
Alvito Vaz is executive director of ID Federation. He is a long-time participant in AUGIE and has held business and technology leadership roles at Progressive and Travelers. He can be reached at alvito@idfederation.com.
