Category Archives: Business

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Spencer Gala Raises $1.14 Million for Risk Management Education

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Spencer Educational Fund Gala

Spencer Scholar DeAnna Young (Photo: Joe Zwielich)

NEW YORK—The Spencer Education Foundation raised more than $1.14 million for scholarships and insurance industry education at last night’s gala dinner at the Waldorf Astoria. Attended by more than 750 industry executives, the 2015 gala set records for both fundraising and number of attendees.

Proceeds from the event will fund scholarships for students and professionals studying risk management and insurance and will also finance the foundation’s grant programs. Last year’s gala raised $1.06 million.

Dean Klisura, managing director of global industry specialties and placement leader for Marsh, and Chris Maleno, senior vice president at ACE Group and division president at ACE USA, were honored for their contributions to the advancement of risk management and insurance educational opportunities.

“These individuals are role models for the next generation of industry leaders, and their companies are, and continue to be, dedicated supporters of the foundation and advocates for industry education,” said Brion Callori, chairman of the Spencer Educational Foundation.

Dean Klisura and Christopher Maleno

Dean Klisura and Christopher Maleno

The gala also featured remarks from three Spencer scholars:

▪ Angela Addo—master’s degree student at Niagara University and recipient of the Anita Benedetti Memorial Scholarship, awarded to the female graduate student with the highest grade point average.

▪ Michael Beneventano—senior at St. John’s University and recipient of the Dante Petrizzo Memorial Scholarship, sponsored by the RIMS NY Chapter.

▪ DeAnna Young—senior at St. John’s University and recipient of the William J. Clagnaz Memorial Scholarship, sponsored by ACE Group.

Discussing the significance of the Spencer Educational Foundation’s scholarship program, Maleno told the Risk Management Monitor, “It’s no secret to anybody—it’s been in the news as currently as this week—that there is a trillion dollars in student debt. A college education costs a significant amount of money, but there is also no doubt that a college education really can change people’s lives. It becomes a gateway to careers and opportunity.”

He noted the importance of Spencer’s core mission to help fund education for people who are interested in risk management and the insurance industry. “We definitely are going to need more fresh minds in this business and we have to get people prepared for that,” he said. “Spencer is not only helping to fund people interested in our industry, but they also work closely with the universities to help create and structure programs in and around risk management.”

Maleno, who has worked with Spencer since 2002, said that there are currently about a dozen young professionals at ACE who are Spencer award recipients.

Klisura told the Monitor that Marsh has employed 28 scholarship recipients over the years and currently has nine former scholars working for the company. “I think we would all agree, as executives and leaders, that we don’t have enough great, young talent coming into the industry. This is a way to identify talent and for them to build their networks and credibility.” He added, “Scholarships provide a financial bridge to ease the way to graduation before they can join the industry and find permanent jobs.”

Spencer announced in May that it has named a record number of full-time scholarship recipients, with 63 undergraduate, graduate and pre-dissertation scholars sharing more than $342,000 in merit-based scholarship awards. Since 1979, more than $5.6 million has been awarded to 820 scholars, Spencer reported.

“In industry conferences and seminars, bringing competent talent into the industry remains one of the major topics of discussion,” Callori said. “Because of the industry’s continued support, we have been able to award a record number of undergraduate and graduate scholarships to some of the best and brightest students desiring to come into the industry.”

Facts about this year’s scholarship class include:

  • Fifty-seven students received undergraduate scholarships of $5,000; six graduate students, including one pre-dissertation Ph.D. student, received $10,000 scholarships.
    • Undergraduate Leah Lupu, a junior at Olivet College, received the $7,500 Doug Barlow Scholarship, recognizing the student with the highest grade point average.
    • Angela Addo, a graduate student at Niagara University, received the Anita Benedetti Memorial Scholarship, given to the female graduate student with the highest GPA.
  • This year’s class of Spencer Scholars represents 27 schools in the U.S. and Canada.
  • For the 58 undergraduate scholars, the average overall GPA is 3.76.
  • Seventy-five percent of the scholars are majoring in risk management & insurance, 29% are studying finance, and 22% are majoring in actuarial studies.
  • Of those undergraduates pursuing minors, information systems was most popular at 29%.

In addition to 25 general undergraduate scholarships, the foundation awarded 33 named undergraduate scholarships.

Automation: The Key to More Effective Cyberrisk Management

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cybersecurity automation

In a perfect cybersecurity world, people would only have access to the data they need, and only when they need it. However, IT budgets are tighter than ever and, in most organizations, manually updating new and existing employees’ access levels on a consistent basis is a time-consuming productivity-killer. As a result, there’s a good chance an employee may accidentally have access to a group of files that they should not. As one can imagine, security that is loosely managed across the enterprise is a breeding ground for malware.

The velocity of cyberattacks has accelerated as well. It is easier than ever for cyber criminals to access exploits, malware, phishing tools, and other resources to automate the creation and execution of an attack. Digitization, Internet connectivity, and smart device growth are creating more vectors for attackers to gain an entry point into an organization’s network, and this trend only gets worse as you think about the Internet of Things, which could have concrete impact on machines from production equipment to planes and cars.

One way IT departments can help mitigate the cyberrisk of employee access overload is through automating security policies and processes such as the monitoring, detection and remediation of threats. In the past, organizations have spent a lot on prevention technologies: disparate point solutions such as anti-virus software and firewalls that try to act before an attack occurs. Prevention is important but not 100% effective. And how could technology used for prevention stop a cyber-attacker that has already infiltrated the network? If prevention were the end-all, be-all in security tools, we wouldn’t be reading about cyberattacks on a daily basis.

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As more companies realize this, a spending shift to detection and response is being driven.

To help determine cyberrisk—or better yet, safely manage your cyberrisk—you must look at the threat (which is ever growing due to constant hackers and advanced techniques), vulnerability (how open your data is to cyberattacks), and consequence (the amount of time threats are doing damage in your network). Or, more simply put: risk = threat X vulnerability X consequence time.

To manage your cyberrisk, you need to optimize at least one of the aforementioned variables. Unfortunately, threat is the one variable that cannot be optimized because hackers will never stop attacking and are creating malware at an escalating rate. In fact, a G DATA study showed that 6 million new malware strains were found by researchers in 2014—almost double the number of new strains found the previous year. Instead, what organizations can focus on is investing in the right solutions that target the remaining two variables: vulnerability and consequence.

  • Step One: Organizations must make sure they know their environments well (such as endpoints, network, and access points) and know where their sensitive information lives. It’s always a good idea to rank systems and information in terms of criticality, value and importance to the business.
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  • Step Two: Organizations must gain increased visibility into potential threat activity occurring in the environment. As is often said, there are two types of companies: those that have been attacked and those that have been attacked and don’t know it. A way to increase visibility is through the deployment of behavior-based technology on the network, like sandboxes. Organizations are now shifting their focus to the endpoint. Today’s attacks require endpoint and network visibility, including correlation of this activity. The challenge with visibility is that it can be overwhelming.
  • Step Three: There needs to be some process or mechanism to determine which alerts matter and which ones should be prioritized. In order to gain increased visibility into environments and detect today’s threats, organizations clearly need to deploy more contemporary detection solutions and advanced threat analytics.
  • Step Four: Invest more in response and shift the mindset to continuous response. If attacks are continuous and we are continuously monitoring, then the next logical step is to respond continuously. Historically, response has been episodic or event-driven (“I’ve been attacked – Do something!
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    ”). This mindset needs to shift to continuous response (“I’m getting attacked all the time – Do something!”).  A key ingredient to enable continuous incident response will be the increasing use of automation. Why? Automation is required to keep up with attackers that are leveraging automation to attack. It’s also required to address a key challenge that large and small companies face: the significant cybersecurity skills shortage.

Advanced threat analytics should be important to any organization that takes its security posture seriously. The majority of threats being faced today are getting more advanced by the minute. If an organization relies solely on legacy, signature-based detection, their defenses will be easily breached. It’s important for teams to understand that the cyber defense and response capabilities of an organization must constantly evolve to match the evolving threat landscape. This includes both automatic detection and remediation. Automatic remediation dramatically reduces the time that malware can exist on a network and also reduces the amount of time spent investigating the issue at hand. With automated security defenses, IT teams are given a forensic view of every packet that moves through the network and allows teams to spot anomalies and threats before they have a chance to wreak havoc. And since these tools are automated and work at machine speed, they can deal with a high volume of threats without necessitating human intervention, taking some of the load off overburdened security teams, and ultimately freeing them to act decisively and quickly, before network damage is done.

As Technology Gets Smaller, Risks Get Bigger

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MicroElectronics

Microelectronics is changing the way we live, work and do business. With circuitry thousands of times smaller than a human hair, microelectronics has become the brains behind almost every business. But shrinking technology makes equipment more vulnerable to breakdowns, especially when it’s portable and fragile. To manage the risk, you need to keep up with these evolving exposures to protect your organization from loss.

Insurance is changing as well, to reflect this new technology. Think of all the equipment that relies on micro-circuitry. From building systems to communications, if it uses electricity, it likely operates with tiny transistors and microprocessors. Our claims data shows that micro-circuitry is prone to break down and is difficult to repair.

Yet, most property coverage does not cover equipment breakdowns and typical equipment breakdown insurance requires proof of physical damage. That can leave a business without coverage for repair or replacement, business interruption and data loss caused by today’s technology losses, unless the policy specifically covers microelectronics failures.

When electronics fail, the components are so small it may be difficult or impossible to see the damage. How small? Intel Corporation reports that more than 100 million of its 22 nanometer tri-gate transistors could fit onto the head of a pin; more than six million transistors would fit in the period at the end of this sentence.

With each innovation, the technology also becomes faster, more powerful and more complex. Transistors are the building blocks of integrated circuits, with billions of transistors integrated and interconnected with circuitry baked into a single microchip. Integrated circuits are used in microprocessors to run computers and programmable devices.

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What’s more, the technology is changing so rapidly, it is hard for most people to keep up. And that’s the challenge for business, industry, and their insurers. In the marketplace, new technology isn’t about theory and experimentation—equipment is an investment and a breakdown can be costly and disruptive.

The evolution of equipment with circuit board technology is causing equipment to fail differently than with previous technology. Microelectronics makes equipment more vulnerable to a breakdown, especially since it’s frequently used in the field. Increasingly, equipment damage is not detectable and sometimes not even physical.

Equipment may stop functioning for no obvious reason, with no apparent physical damage. If a wire one micron wide breaks, it’s almost undetectable. Most electronic equipment requires firmware, embedded software instructions that can become corrupted. The equipment stops working, but it’s not because of physical damage.

With the internet and cloud computing, a loss may also be virtual. Studies show the majority of U.S. businesses use the cloud; some estimates report that up to 75% or more use some type of cloud services. The loss of internet broadband service and cloud connectivity can cripple many business operations.

Gartner Incorporated, the information technology research and advisory company, estimates there will be 26 billion connected devices by 2020. Already, Wi-Fi connections and radio-frequency identification using sensors and monitors enable the remote management of everything from retail business inventories to building thermostats.

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It’s difficult to predict when the next leap will come in new technologies for microelectronics. In what seems like science fiction, some researchers aim to break through the limits of conventional electronics using silicon chips by integrating biological and nanoelectrical systems.

What will this mean for business and industry?

Some of the old concepts of property insurance, developed over a century ago, may no longer serve businesses and insurers as well. Technology is too complex. In a digital world, we live and work online. Technology connects us and provides the tools to communicate, create products and deliver services. Data is what drives a successful business.

For decades, the trigger for equipment breakdown and other property insurance has been based on loss due to physical damage that can be observed and identified. As more equipment breakdowns involve micro-circuitry, however, it’s time to take a different approach.

When purchasing equipment breakdown insurance, ask what “failures” are covered for micro-electronics. There should be no additional sublimits or deductibles—microelectronics claims should be like other equipment breakdown losses. Are cloud services covered under service interruption? Is data restoration included? When does off-premises coverage apply?

Insurers must offer new and innovative products and insurance solutions to cover today’s micro-technology for breakdowns. In a complex world, it’s as simple as that.

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Defective Sidewalk Conditions: Who is at Fault?

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Liability between municipalities and landowners for injuries sustained by pedestrians due to defective sidewalk conditions has been the subject of lawsuits and statutory enactments for years. In California, municipalities generally own the sidewalks adjacent to private property owners’ land, but state law provides that the landowners are responsible for maintaining the sidewalk fronting their property in a safe and usable manner. According to Streets and Highways Code 5610:

“The owners of lots or portions of lots fronting on any portion of a public street or place when that street or place is improved or if and when the area between the property line of the adjacent property and the street line is maintained as a parking or a parking strip, shall maintain any sidewalk in such condition that the sidewalk will not endanger persons or property and maintain it in a condition which will not interfere with the public convenience…”

California state law provides that a municipality may assess landowners for the cost the municipality incurs to maintain sidewalks if the landowner fails to perform his/her duty. Although state law provides that abutting landowners are responsible for sidewalk maintenance and may be assessed the cost of repairs, they may not be liable for injuries or damages to third persons who use the sidewalk, unless the municipality enacts an ordinance that addresses liability. Williams v. Foster (1989). Williams arose after the plaintiff, Dennis Williams, tripped on a raised portion of the sidewalk in the City of San Jose, and thereafter sued the City. In its defense, San Jose argued that under 5610, the owner of the property fronting the sidewalk in question was solely liable.

Rejecting this contention, the court held that Foster (landowner) owed no legal duty at all to the injured plaintiff.

In reaching the Williams decision, the court held that imposing upon abutting owners a duty of care in favor of third persons “would require clear and unambiguous language,” which according to the court, is not contained in 5610. Notably, the court went on to state that the City “could have enacted an ordinance which expressly made abutting owners liable to members of the public for failure to maintain the sidewalk, but did not.” Following the Williams decision, the City of San Jose amended its sidewalk ordinance to include language similar to that suggested by the Williams Court.

In 2001, after adopting a sidewalk liability ordinance that addressed the issues raised in Williams, San Jose was sued by Joanne Gonzalez, who alleged she was injured when she tripped and fell over a raised portion on a public sidewalk. Gonzalez also sued Charles Huang, who owned the property adjacent to the sidewalk on which she fell.  Huang was sued on the theory that he had a common law duty to the plaintiff to maintain the sidewalk in a non-dangerous condition, as well as a duty under the San Jose Municipal Code.

The City of San Jose argued that the adjacent property owner was partially liable because he had not maintained the sidewalk as required by the local ordinance. Huang filed a motion for summary judgment arguing in part that the sidewalk liability ordinance enacted by the City of San Jose was unconstitutional. The trial court agreed with Huang and granted his Motion for Summary Judgment. Both Gonzalez and the City of San Jose appealed.

The case proceeded to the Court of Appeal which in 2004 ruled in San Jose’s favor.

  (Gonzales v. City of San Jose (2004.) The primary issue before the court was whether the state law preempted the local measure. The court found that the ordinance was constitutional and was not preempted by state law.

In its holding, the Gonzales court noted that cities are empowered under the California Constitution to enact ordinances and regulations deemed necessary to protect the public health, safety, and welfare, and that the City of San Jose’s ordinance was a permissible exercise of that power. Without such an ordinance, the court noted, landowners would have no incentive to maintain adjacent sidewalks in a safe manner.

The court emphasized that the ordinance did not serve to absolve the city of liability for dangerous conditions on city-owned sidewalks when the city created the dangerous condition, knew of its existence and failed to remedy it. Since the Gonzales ruling, many municipalities have considered liability shifting ordinances. Some have enacted such ordinances while others have not, oftentimes on public policy concerns.

Note that even in jurisdictions which have enacted liability shifting ordinances, one must determine the cause of the defective sidewalk condition. In many ordinances, liability does not shift to the landowner if the landowner did not cause the defective condition to exist.

Thus, in analyzing liability in a case involving an allegedly defective sidewalk condition, a major issue will be whether the municipality has a liability shifting ordinance. If such an ordinance exists, it must be read carefully to determine its scope, as each ordinance differs from municipality to municipality.