Source: www.lastwatchdog.com – Author: bacohido
Catastrophic outages don’t just crash systems — they expose assumptions.
Related: Getting the most from cyber insurance
At RSAC 2025, I met with ESET Chief Security Evangelist Tony Anscombe to trace a quiet but growing convergence: endpoint defense, cyber insurance, and monoculture risk are no longer separate concerns. They’re overlapping — and reshaping how security programs are evaluated.
Anscombe has been tracking this evolution for decades. When I first interviewed him in 2010, “endpoint protection” was still called antivirus. It was about stopping malicious code and blocking known threats.
Widening expectations
Today, endpoint security is something else entirely. It’s an engine of real-time telemetry — not just threat detection, but evidence of operational resilience. And increasingly, that evidence is under scrutiny.
Cyber insurers want it. MSSPs need it. Internal stakeholders are being told to prove it.
That shift, Anscombe argues, is changing how security leaders evaluate products. Detection remains critical, of course. But visibility, context, and integration with insurance-driven expectations are now central to procurement decisions.
This isn’t just about checkboxes — it’s about accountability. When a ransomware incident triggers a denial of coverage or a regulatory rebuke, CISOs need defensible proof of what their tools were doing in the moments that mattered.
And what of AI? For ESET, it’s not hype — it’s heritage. The company has used neural networks in its threat modeling pipeline since the late 1990s, long before today’s generative wave. What’s changed is that AI is now a boardroom talking point — even if it’s no longer the showstopper it was in prior years.
“AI is here,” Anscombe says. “But what matters more is how you operationalize it — especially when underwriters, partners, and customers are all watching.”
Trust-building=deal-making
At the center of it all is endpoint. Still the primary attack surface. Still the first line of defense. But also — increasingly — a focal point in insurance negotiations, due diligence reviews, and third-party risk assessments.
As organizations evaluate prospective vendors, partners, and supply chain participants, endpoint telemetry and security posture are becoming critical components of trust-building — and deal-making.
Anscombe flags a deeper concern: monoculture. they may gain convenience — but lose resilience. Homogenous infrastructure creates shared blind spots, which adversaries can exploit at scale.
In some cases, cyber insurers are nudging organizations toward certain vendors, creating a perceived ‘safe list’ of tools that check the boxes. But this can lead to homogenized infrastructure — and shared blind spots that adversaries can exploit at scale.
“Endpoint defense, insurance demands, and monoculture risk aren’t siloed anymore,” Anscombe observes. “They’re intersecting. And that means endpoint security has to do more than detect. It has to show its work.”
Insurers want proof that security tools aren’t just deployed — they’re working as intended. That telemetry — live, verified, and tied to real-world alerts — is becoming the new currency of insurability.
It’s not about complimenting AV with EDR. It’s about showing your stack can hold up — when the system stutters. For a full drill down, give the accompanying podcast a listen.
I’ll keep watching — and keep reporting.
Acohido
Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.
(LW provides consulting services to the vendors we cover.)
The post RSAC Fireside Chat: Operationalizing diverse security to assure customers, partners–and insurers first appeared on The Last Watchdog.
Original Post URL: https://www.lastwatchdog.com/rsac-fireside-chat-operationalizing-diverse-security-to-assure-customers-partners-and-insurers/
Category & Tags: RSAC,Top Stories – RSAC,Top Stories
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