DynaRisk Tool Aims to Turn Cyber Risk 'Awareness' into 'Urgency'

LONDON – March 11, 2026 – Cyber intelligence firm DynaRisk today launched a new capability designed to dismantle the single greatest barrier to selling cyber insurance: a lack of perceived urgency. The new Customer Cyber Exposure Scan provides insurance distributors with concrete evidence that a significant portion of their potential partners' customers are already compromised by data breaches, malware, and active targeting by threat actors.

The move directly confronts a persistent paradox in the insurance world. While cyber remains one of the fastest-growing lines of business, distributors from brokers to banks have struggled to convince potential partners to prioritize cyber programs. By showing these organizations a quantified, existing risk within their own customer base, DynaRisk aims to transform the sales conversation from a discussion of hypothetical threats into an evidence-based case for immediate action.

"The barrier to selling cyber isn't awareness; it's urgency and data," said Andrew Martin, CEO of DynaRisk, in a statement announcing the launch. "When you can show a prospective distributor that tens of thousands of their own customers already have credentials on the dark web and are being actively targeted by threat actors, the conversation changes completely. You're no longer selling them on a hypothetical future risk. You're showing them something that's already happening to their customers, right now."

The Stubborn 'Urgency Gap' in a Growing Market

DynaRisk's new tool enters a market grappling with a well-documented "cyber distribution gap." Despite intense competition among insurers and a recent softening of rates, a vast number of businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), remain uninsured or underinsured. Industry reports consistently find that the primary obstacle is inertia, rooted in the belief that a cyberattack is a distant, abstract possibility.

Brokers and insurers frequently report hearing objections like, "It's not a priority right now," or "Our customers aren't asking for it," which indefinitely stalls decisions. This challenge is compounded by a data deficit within the insurance industry itself. Traditional underwriting has long relied on static questionnaires and self-reported security measures, which are often inaccurate and fail to capture the dynamic, real-time nature of cyber threats.

"There is a recognized need for improved modeling capabilities due to the sub-optimal quality of cyber loss data," noted one recent analysis from an industry think tank. Underwriters are often inundated with data but struggle to separate meaningful signals from background noise. This creates a difficult environment for accurately pricing risk and for effectively communicating its severity to potential clients.

Turning Billions of Data Points into Actionable Intelligence

The Customer Cyber Exposure Scan is designed to cut through this inertia by making the threat personal to the prospective distributor. Leveraging a proprietary database that DynaRisk claims includes over 60 billion leaked data entities, 25 billion info-stealer records, and 3 billion hacker chatter records, the tool conducts a passive intelligence sweep.

Crucially, the scan requires no data from the prospective partner—such as a bank, retailer, or membership organization—and no access to their internal systems. Instead, it scours publicly available information and dark web sources to identify evidence of compromise linked to a target organization's customer profile.

The results are compiled into a "boardroom-ready" Customer Cyber Exposure Report. This document quantifies the number of customer credentials found on the dark web, estimates the volume of devices compromised by malware, and even profiles threat actors who are actively targeting the prospect's customer demographic. The goal is to provide a compelling, data-driven argument that shifts the focus from a generic sales pitch to an immediate and profitable opportunity to address an existing problem.

While the scale of DynaRisk's claimed data sources is vast, the practice of monitoring the dark web is a staple of the cyber intelligence industry. The true test, experts say, lies not in the volume of data collected but in the ability to accurately analyze and contextualize it into reliable, actionable intelligence.

A New Frontier or a Privacy Minefield?

The innovative approach of passively scanning for "customer cyber exposure" raises as many questions as it aims to answer, particularly in the realm of privacy and regulation. By analyzing and reporting on the cyber vulnerabilities of individuals—even if they are customers of a third party—the service steps into a complex legal landscape governed by rules like Europe's GDPR and California's CCPA.

Legal experts caution that the methodology's greatest strength—requiring no data or consent from the partner—could also be its point of greatest vulnerability. The core question is whether the generated reports contain aggregated, anonymized data or provide insights that could be used to identify specific, compromised individuals. If it's the latter, the process could be challenged on the grounds of processing personal data without a lawful basis, such as consent.

"The term 'customer cyber exposure' is legally charged. The moment you start talking about a specific individual's exposure, you're handling sensitive personal data, and the rules are strict," a privacy lawyer specializing in technology commented. "Any insurer using such a tool will need absolute certainty from their compliance department that it doesn't cross a regulatory line."

DynaRisk's emphasis on the scan being "entirely passive" suggests a focus on data already in the public or criminal domain. However, the adoption of this tool by a highly regulated industry like insurance will likely depend on its ability to provide powerful insights without creating new legal or ethical liabilities for its users. For many in the industry, the tool's success will hinge on its capacity to navigate this fine line, proving its value not just to sales teams but to the legal and compliance officers who gatekeep new technologies. The ability to demonstrate present danger in an industry built on pricing future risk could fundamentally change the cyber insurance conversation.