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WITH 60,000 EMPLOYEES TO KEEP SAFE, HOW HOTEL RISK MANAGER SHERRI JOHNSON
NAVIGATED BOTH A MERGER AND A PANDEMIC

A merger, a pandemic, regulatory standards and more. How Aimbridge Hospitality’s
Sherri Johnson navigated difficult times.
By: Autumn Demberger | September 2, 2021
Topics: Hospitality | Profiles | Risk All Stars | Risk Management | September
2021 Issue | Workers' Comp | Workers' Comp Forum



Sherri Johnson has built a reputation on handwriting get-well cards to sick
employees.

So when the pandemic hit, her job was more than managing through unchartered
waters; it was about putting her employees first.

“My whole focus was making sure employees were taken care of — we knew that the
pandemic wasn’t going to last forever, so how do we keep operations going and
protect employees as much as we can?” Johnson said.

As the vice president of corporate claims for Aimbridge Hospitality, Johnson had
over 1,500 hotels in her hemisphere to oversee with approximately 60,000
employees to protect at the onset of the pandemic.

Keeping employees safe would be no small feat.

Added to that, Aimbridge had undergone a significant merger only six months
prior to shutdowns. Not only was the company working diligently to integrate two
large hospitality giants into one company, but they were also working through
COVID safety protocols and implementation.

Aimbridge formed a corporate response team early on, comprised of risk
management, legal, operations, human resources and the procurement department.

Johnson said this response team fielded daily calls from its hotels’ general
managers.

“We were there to answer whatever questions, address whatever issues were going
on at their hotels. We conducted a weekly COVID update that helped keep the
communication lines open.”

Johnson and her team took it a step further and redeployed one of Aimbridge’s
existing reporting platforms to aid in communication and reporting of incidents.
An email platform was dedicated solely to COVID-19 communication, enabling easy
access to those monitoring the COVID situation closely.

Further, the team worked round the clock to meet the regulatory reporting
standards of the jurisdictions its employees worked in. California State Bill
1159 was one such regulatory hurdle for the team to address.

The bill required positive COVID-19 cases be reported within three business
days, whether the illness was contracted at work or not. Required in the report
was the date the employee tested positive, the address of their employer, and
the highest number of employees who reported to that specific work site.



Reporting penalties cost $10,000 for each violation.

“Our hotels were already overburdened [with operational changes and protecting
employees]. We had our hands full. We decided our best option would be to
identify a resource outside our team to help with COVID tracing,” said Johnson.

Enter Gallagher Bassett, which, through the email system Johnson’s team had
already set in motion, was able to collect the required contact tracing data —
and not just for California employees but for all of Aimbridge’s employees so
that if there were ever any questions or concerns, Johnson and her team would
have the contact tracing information ready to go.

“With Gallagher Bassett’s help, we were able to trace over 600 incidents, and
I’m happy to report that we did not have any of the outbreaks that were defined
under SB 1159,” Johnson said. &

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every year, Risk & Insurance selects deserving candidates to become Risk All
Stars. These are risk managers who, through their perseverance, passion and
creativity, make a big difference to the stability of their organizations.

See all the 2021 Risk All Star Winners here.

Autumn Demberger is the content strategist at Risk & Insurance®. She can be
reached at demberger@theinstitutes.org.





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SPONSORED CONTENT: ALLIED WORLD



THE STATE OF CYBER INSURANCE: UNDERSTANDING THIS TRANSITIONAL MARKET AND FINDING
WAYS TO MAKE YOUR COMPANY INSURABLE

Cyber exposures are becoming increasingly harder to insure, but companies can
rest easy partnering with a carrier that will help make them a favorable risk to
underwrite.
By: Allied World | May 2, 2022

The cyber insurance landscape is changing every day as more technology is
introduced and information is stored by digital means. Innovation and growth
abound.

But just as quickly as cyber-enabled technology and devices hit the market, so
too do malicious actors — hackers who are more than happy to encrypt a file,
hold data for ransom or demand bitcoin payment over threats of extortion.
Businesses big and small have to be on the lookout for solutions to protect
against unwanted cyber threats.

“Every company has privacy and cyber exposures,” said Jason Glasgow, Senior Vice
President, and U.S. Cyber Lead at Allied World. “It comes down to how much
exposure they have and how they choose to protect their assets.”

The cyber market itself is hardening, and protecting against growing threats has
become an imperative but sometimes difficult task. Cyber events are costing
insurers and insureds big — the average cost of a data breach in 2021 reached
$4.24 million per incident, the highest in 17 years, according to IBM and the
Ponemon Institute. And the market is reacting, pulling back on capacity and
meticulously reviewing whether an insured is even a good risk to take on.

Luckily, there are ways for businesses and their risk managers to show they are
a favorable risk to insure.

Here’s a look at the state of the cyber market today and how risk professionals
can partner with their carrier to get adequate coverage for cyber risk.


THE CYBER MARKET: HOW WE GOT HERE

Jason Glasgow, Senior Vice President, and U.S. Cyber Lead at Allied World

When looking at cyber as an exposure, it’s important to understand how the
marketplace got to where it is today. Cyber, compared to other lines like
property or workers’ compensation, could be called a “newer” insurance. But it’s
been around long enough — more than 20 years now — that there’s a good amount of
history to look at and learn from.

“What we really think of as cyber insurance started around the year 2000 as
privacy liability,” explained Glasgow. At the time, carriers saw data breaches
as the primary exposure for a cyber policy. Such incidents would involve hackers
infiltrating a system, gaining access to personal information and monetizing
that information on the dark web.

But, as we all know, the simplicity of a data breach grew complex as the world
turned more and more toward digital capabilities.

“It started to change in 2018 or so,” Glasgow said. “Threat actors started
devising different ways to monetize their activities. They realized that having
personal information, credit card numbers, healthcare information wasn’t
enough.” Malware became more sophisticated. Companies were dealing almost
exclusively online. Hackers realized they could ask for much larger sums,
upwards of $2 million to $10 million, and businesses would pay.

“Carriers started having much more severe losses on their cyber portfolios than
they had before, but coverage remained mostly the same,” Glasgow said.

Then 2020 came.

“2020 was a perfect storm,” said Brook Dutcher, Vice President, FrameWRX Lead
and Cyber Strategic Initiatives.  “In addition to the pandemic, the rise in
large systemic cyber attacks and work from home vulnerabilities, we saw a marked
increase in double extortion, which is the criminal practice of exfiltrating
confidential proprietary information to use as leverage coupled with the
encryption of victim’s systems.

“All those components, combined with ransomware, exponentially magnified the
impact of the malicious activity and criminal activity associated with cyber
breaches,” he said.

“These expanded circumstances and increase in market sustained ransomware losses
– both in frequency and severity – drove the market to react with tighter
controls, lowered capacity and higher rates.”


2022’S CYBER MARKET UPDATE

Brook Dutcher, Vice President, FrameWRX Lead and Cyber Strategic Initiatives at
Allied World

Today, the insurance industry is doubling down on its response.

“We’re in a transitional market. Threats are shifting from that traditional data
breach and privacy liability coverage to that of a first-party exposure around
ransomware expenses, ransom payments and business interruption,” Glasgow
explained.

This shift to first-party exposure directly links to insurance companies paying
more severe losses at a much faster pace, which is why carriers are adjusting
their approach.

Premiums have increased to compensate for significant losses. Self-insured
retentions are also on the rise. Underwriters are asking detailed questions of
their potential insureds, vetting them to make sure they are a favorable risk to
take on.

“We are seeing a maturing within the market space as a result of large systemic
events — the rise of ransomware, the cost of ransomware and the short period of
time required to come up with the ransom payments,” Dutcher said.

“We now have a marketplace that’s positioned very differently compared to three
years ago. It’s looking at cybersecurity in a very serious, new light.”


BECOMING A FAVORABLE RISK

The question on every risk professional’s mind should be how to make their
business as cyber ready as possible. Underwriters are on the lookout for
insureds that are proactive in their cyber approach.

“The underwriting community is asking detailed questions about whether or not
specific protocols or practices are in place to prevent attacks,” Dutcher
explained. “These detailed questions focus on security posture, security
hygiene, endpoint detection, whether there’s active NextGen firewall technology
in place, as well as a variety of other factors that are contemplated during the
underwriting process.”

Compliance with regulations and the law is another area where underwriters are
reviewing insureds’ practices, especially for businesses operating with a
complex supply chain spanning multiple countries and jurisdictions.

“Recognizing compliance down through the supply chain is becoming more and more
important,” said Dutcher.

Dutcher said these safeguards are necessities to make a risk more palatable for
carriers in the marketplace.

“We want to make sure businesses are proactive beyond the most basic levels of
compliance within their respective industry sectors. We want to make sure that
there’s multifactor authentication. We want to make sure that there is
encryption on devices. We want to make sure that there’s access privileges and
escalation privileges,” he said.


DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE ROLE A CARRIER CAN PLAY

The good news: Compliance and safeguards can be implemented with the help of the
entire cyber team, including guidance from carriers.

“Carriers are encouraging insureds to participate in proactive services, to
mitigate risk, not only for the benefit of carrier, but for the benefit of the
insured,” said Glasgow.

For example, Allied World //FrameWRXSM, a proactive risk management platform,
was designed to provide insureds with cyber best practices and risk reduction
tools, which in turn should help them become (and remain) favorable risks.

“Cyber can become more and more difficult to manage because the higher the
amount of assets, the more levels of compliance required,” Dutcher said.
“Through our FrameWRX offering, we provide phishing exercises, tabletop
exercises, security hygiene exercises – all at no additional cost – so that
we’re able to identify client vulnerabilities and help fix them.”

Carriers are offering similar services because finding the right tools and
resources helps clients better prepare for cyber threats. Allied World doesn’t
shy away from innovations, either.

“We most recently partnered with CyRisk, a vulnerability management platform,
which provides real-time threat assessments, real-time vulnerability assessment,
asset discovery, vendor assessment / management, access to market and threat
intelligence,” Dutcher said.

“Our company believes that the best way to protect against cyber threats is to
be proactive on our end,” added Glasgow. “We’ve implemented a white glove
concierge approach where we invite the insured to participate in the FrameWRX
platform. We’re then in a position to have an introductory call with the risk
management personnel to discuss their protocols, practices and identify areas
where our FrameWRX services can assist in shoring up their systems.”

The team also works with the insured to ensure they are proactive against cyber
issues. Allied World gives the insured as much direct control as possible to
allow them the chance to monitor their own risks with the aid of the cyber team
just one call away.

“With that control, the insured can generate the types of reports that they want
to see with the frequency they want, and distribute that throughout their supply
chain, as they deem necessary,” said Glasgow.  “This holistic, proactive
partnership approach affords both the carrier and the client the confidence to
know that every effort is being made to keep threat actors at bay.  It’s a great
example of the proactive value of insurance as a way to help reduce or mitigate
loss.”

To learn more about Allied World, visit:
https://alliedworldinsurance.com/products/framewrx/.

 Coverage will be underwritten by an insurance subsidiary of Allied World
Assurance Company Holdings, Ltd, a Fairfax company (“Allied World”). Such
subsidiaries currently carry an A.M. Best rating of “A” (Excellent), a Moody’s
rating of “A2” (Good) and a Standard & Poor’s rating of “A-” (Strong), as
applicable. Coverage is offered only through licensed agents and brokers. Actual
coverage may vary and is subject to policy language as issued. Coverage may not
be available in all jurisdictions. © 2022 Allied World Assurance Company
Holdings, Ltd. All rights reserved.





This article was produced by the R&I Brand Studio, a unit of the advertising
department of Risk & Insurance, in collaboration with Allied World. The
editorial staff of Risk & Insurance had no role in its preparation.


Allied World is a global provider of innovative property, casualty and specialty
insurance and reinsurance solutions.







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The R&I Editorial Team can be reached at riskletters@theinstitutes.org.





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