Meet the insurtech: KYND
KYND, a cyber risk technology and consultancy provider founded in 2017, was named by CNBC as one of the world’s top 150 insurtech companies in 2024. The insurtech, which helps cyber insurers and brokers assess cyber risk profiles and exposures in their portfolios, was recognized in the Underwriting and Risk Analysis category for its streamlined use of data analytics technology.
“Insurance is very much in our DNA, and we’ve been on a pretty wonderful journey helping our partners understand, write, sell and procure cyber liability insurance,” said Ben Duffy, KYND’s head of North America. ” We provide technographic mapping and active portfolio monitoring of cyber risks. It’s a full end-to-end underwriting workbench, from understanding insurers and avoiding adverse selection to improving posture in control and risk.”
KYND provides event response, exposure management and accumulation analysis to help its partners better understand systemic cyber loss. Its tech also detects “zero-day exploits,” software vulnerability flaws that are unknown or unaddressed and expose a gap in security.
“What makes KYND truly unique is our ability to combine extremely advanced, complex, deep analysis at speed in the background, but deliver it with simplicity and accessibility at the core of the products and the solutions,” said Duffy.
The platform continuously monitors and alerts you of scam attempts and attacks. Some of its analysis tools include review of internal security systems and practices, cloud environment security, data breach protection, domain discovery, expired certificate risks and phishing or malware attempts. Rather than providing cyber risk scores, KYND will give its partners actionable risk insights and decisions for security improvements.
Its mission is to “demystify” complex cyber risk analysis by promoting simplicity in its platform and tailoring the experience to customers’ specific needs. KYND builds custom solutions for their partners, because of the unique needs or risk sensitivity of each underwriter or broker.
“We’ve built a proprietary technology stack and data that’s based on fast, live, fresh results each and every time. We’re not pulling from a catalog of organizations, we’re not constrained by geography, industry or organization sites. We’re a digital-first analysis,” Duffyadded.
KYND also uses AI and machine learning in its advanced data analytics to simplify and accelerate the cyber risk detection process.
“In the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence is both a powerful tool and a formidable adversary. KYND is using AI to revolutionize cybersecurity defenses with advanced threat detection, predictive analytics and automated response mechanisms,” said Manu Singh, head of cyber at KYND. “Simultaneously, we’re addressing the emerging threats posed by AI-driven attacks, including sophisticated phishing schemes, AI-powered malware and deepfake technology, by providing easy-to-understand, accurate, on-demand results through our API.”
The British insurtech officially launched in the U.S. in July 2024.
Duffy stated, “We’ve taken huge steps forward on our innovation around risk selection, about understanding singular insurance at speed. But we’re not finished there. We want to make that interaction between the underwriter and the insured as frictionless as possible.”
This year, KYND plans to launch an underwriting platform that helps to eliminate the burden of the application form and create a more efficient pre-underwriting process. Plans also include improving exposure management and accumulation analysis in a way that is more interactive and easy to integrate into in-house models. Its focus for event response and zero-day efforts to “make that as insightful, automatic and actionable as possible,” Duffy said. “We’re not just an additional modeler out there, we’re here to supercharge the growth capability of those teams to mature their cyber programs.”
