As technology advances and devices become more interconnected, security risks multiply. A large scale cyberattack which took down websites like Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter last month alerted many people to the risks of what’s known as the internet of things.
Keeping ahead of those emerging risks is a challenge for the insurance industry, and it’s one that Connecticut’s Hartford Steam Boiler has been taking on in recent years.
For Hartford Steam Boiler, the origins of the company are right there in the name.
“We feel the richness of the history is actually a really important part of our story,” said Greg Barats who has led HSB since 2011.
The company itself dates back to 1866, when it was formed to counter the massive risks posed by the unstable new technology of steam boilers. Back then, HSB offered both engineering capability to maintain steam boilers and financial products to insure them.
That mix has persisted through today; the company still insures a lot of commercial equipment, but that now includes devices which connect to each other and to the internet to share information.
“The new oil of the future is really data,” Barats told WNPR. The internet of things includes so-called smart household devices, like internet-connected thermostats and security cameras.
But it’s also becoming ubiquitous in the business world as companies seek to increase productivity by gleaning data from all of their operations. For instance, Pratt and Whitney's new jet engines send back thousands of data points to engineers at the company who can monitor their performance in flight, in real time.
Barats describes the changes that the internet of things is driving as the fourth industrial revolution.
"It’s really becoming more difficult to define individual pieces of equipment – it’s becoming more integrated," he said. "And the internet of things, when you connect everything with sensors, and they interact with each other, and they run algorithms with each other and they change their behavior – to understand how to protect that data, and understand that cyber exposure is just a natural extension of who we are."
HSB offers insurance products to protect companies that are investing in the internet of things, and to mitigate the risks posed by the free flow of company and customer data.
But it’s also using the internet of things itself to limit exposure, deploying sensors, and applications to monitor equipment and facilities and warn of potential insurance losses.
