The State of Cyber Insurance in 2025

Why Your Workforce Training Program Might Be the Real Underwriter

Cyber insurers in 2025 are shifting their priorities. Technical controls still matter, but they are now placing equal weight on how well your workforce is trained. Coverage decisions increasingly depend on whether employees can recognize phishing attempts, follow escalation procedures, and understand their role in minimizing risk.

The strength of your security training program directly influences eligibility, pricing, and policy scope. Insurers want evidence that your teams are engaged, informed, and improving over time. Without that, even well-designed security infrastructure may not be enough to justify favorable coverage.

Cyber Insurance Is Now a Performance Evaluation

Applications Are Looking Beyond Your Technology Stack

Insurers are reviewing how well security is operationalized. The process now involves more than checking for endpoint protection or multifactor authentication. Carriers want to know what happens when an employee receives a suspicious email. They want to know if your development team is trained in secure coding. They want evidence that security awareness is not limited to onboarding.

This is where many organizations fall short. A single annual video or quiz is no longer enough. Insurers are looking for deeper engagement, including education aligned to job functions and designed to build lasting knowledge.

Training programs are being reviewed with the same scrutiny once reserved for firewalls and backups. Underwriters may even request phishing simulation data, learning completion rates, or an overview of how training is adapted for different departments.

This approach gives insurers a more accurate picture of your organization’s day-to-day readiness. It also allows them to assess whether your past investments in training are producing meaningful behavioral changes.

The Hidden Power of Training

Education Is Becoming a Risk Control in Its Own Right

Organizations that can demonstrate measurable improvements in workforce behavior are gaining a stronger position during underwriting. Structured, documented, and role-specific training programs help reduce perceived risk, and insurers have started to recognize that.

Many now factor training quality into premium decisions. Some even provide better terms to organizations that align their programs with frameworks like NIST NICE or ISO 27001.

To meet these expectations, organizations need to go beyond surface-level awareness and focus on applied, role-based education. This means helping security teams strengthen detection and response skills, guiding developers in secure coding, and equipping business leaders to make informed risk decisions.

This shift is especially important for sectors like healthcare, financial services, and education, where insurers have seen repeated claims tied to human behavior rather than system failure. A strong security training program can reduce the likelihood of claims and give insurers more confidence when defining policy scope.

Training and Exclusions Go Hand in Hand

When Education Is Absent, Gaps Start to Appear

Policy exclusions are becoming more specific. In 2025, it is common to see clauses that deny coverage for social engineering, credential compromise, or third-party service breaches unless certain conditions are met.

These conditions often assume employees have been trained to avoid or mitigate these events. Without a training program in place (or without documentation of how it is implemented and reinforced) those exclusions can be difficult to contest.

Many organizations are now required to show that incident response procedures are practiced, that secure credential handling is understood, and that phishing simulations occur regularly. These elements are no longer value-adds but are rather part of the baseline insurers now use to assess risk.

What Underwriters Want to See

Training Metrics That Actually Matter

Insurance providers aren’t asking for perfection, but they are asking for progress. Security leaders should be ready to present:

• Training completion rates across departments
• Trends from phishing simulations over time
• Documentation of remediation steps when employees fail assessments
• Role-based training content and how it maps to risk areas
• Leadership participation in tabletop exercises or response drills

These metrics provide a narrative around your organization’s security training repertoire. They help brokers and carriers understand how your organization is maturing. They also create space for negotiation, especially when coverage limitations are on the table.

How to Make Training Work for Your Policy

Steps To Improve Your Coverage Without Adding Complexity

A thoughtful, well-executed training program can support both your security culture and your insurance goals. Here are four ways to build one that insurers will respect:

1. Customize Training to Your Environment: Avoid generic awareness modules. Develop or license content tailored to your risk profile. Include guidance for technical teams, business leaders, and general staff.
2. Track Engagement, Not Just Completion: Completion rates matter, but they only tell part of the story. Measure participation in simulations, test scores, and progress over time. Use those insights to improve future content.
3. Make Training Part of the Incident Lifecycle: Include education in your post-incident response. When something goes wrong, review whether training could have prevented it. Then adapt your approach accordingly.
4. Communicate Training Outcomes Internally: Share improvements across the business. Help executive stakeholders understand how training supports insurance negotiations, compliance, and long-term risk reduction.

What This Means for Security Leaders

Cyber Insurance Is Now a Reflection of Your Culture

Policies are starting to mirror organizational behavior. Insurers are pricing based on what they see in your documentation, in your audit trail, and in your training records. This gives security teams an opportunity to shape coverage from the inside out.

A well-trained workforce reduces risk. It also signals to insurers that your organization is intentional, accountable, and improving. In 2025, that signal carries more weight than ever.

About CyberEd.io

CyberEd.io delivers advanced cybersecurity training designed for organizations that value both operational maturity and measurable impact. Our role-specific content aligns with industry frameworks, supports internal policy goals, and helps teams prepare for insurance evaluations with confidence. CyberEd.io provides cybersecurity training and education for all job levels, from technical teams to executive leadership. We help organizations move beyond awareness by offering in-depth, skills-based training and hands-on labs that reflect the complexity of today’s risk environment.

Looking to upskill your team? Contact us today to build a custom security training program for your organization.