This article will explore the benefits of investing in accredited Cyber CPD for the professional development of Chartered Insurance Institute Members. Click here for a sneak peek into our course materials.
With cyber-attacks no longer bound to the world of science fiction, cyber expertise is becoming indispensable for the world that we live in. Public and private organizations alike are facing cyber attacks and are left to deal with the consequences, often lacking the skills to deal with cyber threats by themselves appropriately. This is compounded by an increasingly digital way of working, which has caused cyber risk to skyrocket.
To protect these businesses from cyber criminals, cyber knowledge and understanding are absolutely vital to developing secure strategies for keeping clients and assets safe in the cyber sphere. Demand for cyber professionals is at an all-time high while, simultaneously, there is a huge shortage of professionals with technical training in the market.
Here, Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits are of useful assistance to mitigate the knowledge gap as such training equips workforces with the skills necessary to keep up with the fast-paced changes in the cyber world and demand for cyber expertise.
What is CPD
The term CPD stands for Continuing Professional Development and is a tool used by professionals across all industries to advance their future career prospects and enhance work performance by improving their skills and developing new knowledge.
CPD is a “must” for professionals, especially those who want to ensure that their academic or practical qualifications do not become outdated and to remain experts on top of their field. Rather than being passive and reactive to developments in your industry, CPD promotes proactive and conscious learning, ensuring that the standard of your qualifications and business operation is maintained.
Continuing Professional development brings a lot of benefits for employees and employers alike, which will be presented below.
Let’s talk about the benefits of CPD for Employees
- Develop their personal skills, as well as identify and resolve any gaps in their knowledge.
- The professional standard of qualifications and registrations are maintained
- Provides a professional sense of direction
- Confidence and credibility are built and enhanced
- The ability to showcase their achievements with a recognized qualification
- Equips employees with the tools to cope positively with change
- Promotes the advancement in career progression
- Demonstrate their transferrable skills and commitment to learning, which can help them with career development and allow them to meet their career goals.
- Develop their self-motivation skills and ability to work well independently.
Benefits of CPD for Businesses
- Company standards are kept high and consistent
- By providing CPD training opportunities, work engagement and commitment are increased throughout the workforce
- Having a variety of employees undertake CPD, concurrently or over a period of time, allows for the sharing of best practices and support
- Staff potential is maximized, while also improving morale
- CPD courses can be used as a benchmark for appraisals or any other staff progression
- Legal CPD requirements are met
- Up-skilling staff can improve their productivity and efficiency.
- It makes a business better able to react to new industry trends.
- CPD can raise a business’s standards, as well as its reputation among clients and job applicants.
- A person’s CPD record can be used as a benchmark during reviews and appraisals.
In the short term, CPD enhances workplace performance and helps develop the soft skills of an employee, such as team management, communication skills, and project planning. In addition to transferring technical knowledge such as system analysis and risk management. CPD also has some long-term benefits: it can help raise a business’s standards, as well as continuously improve its reputation among clients and job applicants.
Click here for a sneak peek into our CPD Certified Cyber Insurance Specialist (CCIS) course materials.
Why should CII members care about Cyber CPD?
Continuing Professional Development is important for the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), and it has accordingly tasked CII members with fulfilling a set number of CPD credits every year as a condition for renewing its accreditation.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, cyber risk has become an increasingly prevalent issue. In fact, Advisen’s 2022 cyber risk report named cyber as the top risk for that year. While many businesses worldwide have moved their operations partially or entirely to the digital sphere, cybercriminals have gained a much bigger attack surface to make bank. Cyber risk is no longer a future, distant problem. Its very real effects are felt today and is clearly here to stay, given increasingly frequent and severe cyber threats, the industry needs to get up-to-date with the latest developments – and quickly.
How CPD can mitigate the risk of the dreaded Silent Cyber
For insurance professionals, the increasing risk of so-called “silent cyber” adds urgency to the need to bring cyber training and cyber CPD to the sector.
Not expressly addressing cyber risks in non-cyber insurance policies can lead to what is called “silent cyber” and is also known as “non–affirmative coverage”. This is when a policy does not explicitly exclude or include coverage of cyber-related incidents, leaving insureds and insurers in a legal quarrel in establishing where the responsibility for occurring damages lies.
Given the increasing use of technology in our everyday life, cyber threats can occur in a wide variety of scenarios and not just in a digital, commercial context. Silent cyber risk, therefore, pervades many insurance products, including property, marine, and many other conventional policies. A robust understanding of cyber risk is therefore imperative for all insurance professionals, and this can be guaranteed through extensive cyber CDP training.
How The Cyber Insurance Academy can help
The Cyber Insurance Academy offers the Certified Cyber Insurance Specialist (CCIS) program that enables CII members to immerse themselves in the complex, fast-paced, and rewarding cyber insurance sector while claiming 100% of their annual CII CPD credits.
The CII accredited Certified Cyber Insurance Specialist (CCIS course) combines technical skills with insurance knowledge to elevate professional practice within the cyber insurance sector while claiming 50 structured CPD points with the CII.
Students are guided through a fully-interactive, self-paced, online program covering both fundamental and advanced cyber security subjects, cyber underwriting, claims and incident response, risk management, regulatory compliance, and more.
After completion of the CCIS course, CCIS graduates join a vast community of alumni where they can remain up to date on the latest industry developments through articles, webinars, workshops, and new courses.
Interested in our Certified Cyber Insurance (CCIS) specialist course or want to find out more about our CII accreditation? Click here.
