When MGM Resorts suffered a $100 million hack in September, CEO Bill Hornbuckle wasn’t too worried about the lost revenue, because cyber insurance would cover the tab. “I can only imagine what next year’s bill will be,” he joked.

Weeks later, on a call with analysts, Hornbuckle complained about the “staggering” rise of insurance costs in the past few years.

This story neatly illustrates the crisis in cyber liability coverage. For years, companies have invested more in security insurance than in actual security. The result has been a tidal wave of data breaches that have driven up the cost of premiums to the point that they are rapidly becoming unaffordable.

Some large enterprises are responding to the increased costs by creating their own “captive carriers,” insurance providers that exist only to serve them. But that’s clearly not an option for small businesses, which are more likely to go without insurance altogether.

According to Andrew Bucci, VP of Sales at Amplified Insurance Partners, “It’s going to come to a point where some people may have to self-insure, which means that they don’t take a cyber policy out and they just cross their fingers they don’t have some sort of breach.” That’s a huge gamble for SMBs, since they could be driven to bankruptcy by a single security incident.

At Kolide, we’ve seen our cyber insurance premiums go up by 40% in just the last two years, and we got curious about:

• What’s driving the increases?
• Who really needs cybersecurity insurance?
• How can the average company reduce their premiums?

What we found was that insurance companies themselves can help get us out of this crisis, by mandating some (pretty basic) security requirements for their customers–things like MFA, endpoint security, and retiring end-of-life software. 

Read the full blog to learn more about our findings.

Our thanks to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Funn Media knows that the best tracking apps make it easy to get started and even simpler to stick with your tracking. That’s exactly what FastMinder, its new iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch app for tracking intermittent fasting, does.

Funn Media’s years of experience developing apps like WaterMinder and Calory show in FastMinder. The app is beautifully designed, making it easy to set up a fasting window with popular presets or a completely custom schedule.

Once you set up your fast and begin, you can track your progress using FastMinder’s Home Screen widgets and Live Activity. Then, over time, you can chart your progress with FastMinder’s Stats tab, tracking the number of your fasts and their length, your current streak, weekly, monthly, and yearly totals, and more. FastMinder also incorporates weight, hydration, and setup tracking, providing the sort of context that many other apps don’t.

FastMinder also includes custom reminders to help keep you on track and insights into the benefits of each stage of a fast. And, with version 1.2, FastMinder will soon add Solar Fasting to its feature set.

If you’ve decided to explore the health benefits of intermittent fasting, make it easier to get started and stay on track by downloading FastMinder from the App Store today.

Our thanks to Funn Media and FastMinder for MacStories this week.