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Welcome to the Pride,

Every Friday, we distill 200+ insurance, legal, and corporate-risk articles into three signals your board should know about by Monday morning.

In the last couple of weeks, Scattered Spider hit Erie, PHLY, and Aflac.

The media's buzzing about an “existential threat,” to all insurance companies. Meanwhile, inside those boardrooms? It's not panic, it's muscle memory.

What separates disaster from containment isn't your response after the breach. It's what you built six months before it.

In advising boards over the years, we’ve seen institutions invest heavily in prevention, but there’s tremendous untapped potential in coordination. While security incidents are challenging, it’s often the response that determines the outcome.

If you want to know what's happening behind closed doors, this might be the most important 5 minutes of your week.

What Strong Institutions Do Before a Breach

A breach doesn't just test your systems.

It tests how well your vendors, legal teams, and insurance partners already work together. Strong institutions don't wait for a crisis. They build the structure before anything goes wrong through contracts, approvals, and rehearsals.

Three areas make the biggest difference:

I. Vendor Coordination

Elite institutions don't just identify vendors. They build muscle memory between IT, Legal, Compliance, and external partners through tabletop exercises and documented playbooks.

• Pre-approved forensics teams
• PR and crisis comms counsel
• Remediation partners
• Cyber breach coaches

During a table top exercise a few years ago, a regional insurer client of ours discovered that their cyber policy required a pre-approved forensics vendor. Yet their IT team had retained someone else. Legal flagged it. The insurer spent a month realigning with the carrier.

Six months later, ransomware hit. The approved vendor was activated within hours and already knew the environment. Containment in 18 hours. No data lost. Regulators commended the response.

This prevented critical delays, corrupted evidence, and "who's in charge?" confusion.

II. Insurance Policy Alignment

Cyber policies aren't just there to pay, they define how you're expected to respond.

Every institution should understand policy triggers and notification timelines, know which vendors are pre-approved, confirm covered costs and sub-limits, and align breach playbooks with policy terms.

The fastest claim resolutions happen when organizations align their cyber coverage with their response planning. With over 50 carriers now offering pre-negotiated vendor networks, institutions can activate expert help immediately.

We’ve seen this lead to faster resolution and better recovery outcomes.

III. Legal Counsel Integration

Legal shouldn't be called after something happens. They should be embedded before it ever does.

The right breach counsel understands your systems, has reviewed vendor contracts, preserves privilege from hour one, and guides regulatory and media strategy.

Every breach produces thousands of documents. Whether they're protected or discoverable depends on decisions made in the first 60 minutes.

The 3 Post Breach Pillars That Turn Crisis into Recovery

The most resilient institutions anchor their post-breach playbooks around three essentials:

1. Technical Response

The first 72 hours set the tone for everything that follows.

Forensics: Identify vector, scope, affected data
​Containment: Isolate systems, preserve evidence
​Eradication: Remove malware, patch vulnerabilities
​Restoration: Rebuild from clean backups
​Monitoring: Activate post-breach surveillance

In March 2021, following their high profile cyber event, CNA Financial struggled to preserve evidence while restoring operations. This ultimately led to complex claims challenges with their insurer.

The lesson? Don't sacrifice chain-of-custody for speed. (source)

2. Stakeholder Communication

Reputation damage is often driven more by messaging than by the breach itself.

Notify customers clearly and on time. Equip employees with consistent messaging. Alert vendors and partners early. Manage public and media communications proactively.

Under SEC rules, public companies must disclose material breaches within 4 business days. That clock starts fast, and regulatory scrutiny, brand erosion, and leadership credibility loss follow poor execution.

3. Legal & Regulatory Compliance

Where reputational damage becomes legal exposure.

Meet notification timelines under GDPR, HIPAA, state laws, SEC. File with regulators and cooperate fully. Preserve documentation for audits or litigation. Pre-negotiate breach protocols with carriers and counsel.

Remember the massive cyber breach at Equifax?

In September 2017, Equifax experienced a significant data breach that exposed the personal information of approximately 147 million individuals. This breach led to a settlement in July 2019, where Equifax agreed to pay up to $700 million to resolve various investigations and lawsuits related to the incident.

It came down to a 6-week delay that turned the breach into a $700M enforcement. Not a technical failure, a procedural one.

Boardroom Takeaway

You’re already ahead of most organizations just by reading this briefing.

While others scramble to understand cyber risk, you’re building the structural advantages that separate industry leaders from the pack.

The institutions that emerge stronger from the past few week’s attacks won’t need luck they’re getting prepared. They’re checking vendor alignment, cleared coverage, and embedded counsel. When the next crisis strikes, they’ll have a competitive advantage disguised as a crisis response plan.

If you need a second opinion, get in touch!

This is your opportunity to join that group.

Every breach reveals two types of organizations: those that built their response structure in advance, and those that improvise under pressure. The prepared institutions don’t just survive incidents—they demonstrate resilience that strengthens stakeholder confidence and market position.

Your next board meeting is the perfect time to ask: “Are we structured for strength or scrambling?”

Because in cyber risk, preparation isn’t just about protection…It’s about competitive advantage.

If You're a Director or Officer, Ask Yourself:

"If this were us, and there was a failure to supervise claim following the breach, would our D&O respond?"

That's why we built the D&O Contract Vigilance Blueprint—a 5-day executive email course to help you:

• Identify and eliminate overlooked D&O coverage gaps
• Lock in favorable terms before claims hit
• Protect both personal and institutional assets from emerging risk

​>>>Get the D&O Contract Vigilance Blueprint​

Don't wait until a catastrophic claim to discover your board protections were never real.

Thanks for reading this week's Boardroom Brief.

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Stay Covered,
​Natasha & Mark Flippen
Co-Founders & Managing Partners
LION Specialty
​Institutional Insurance Strategy