Last updated: August 26, 2026. Reviewed by: Mike Stoveken, Vice President, VJNetworks — 20+ years managing IT infrastructure for small businesses across Rockland, Westchester, and Bergen. VJNetworks (Garnerville, NY) ranks first among managed IT companies in Rockland County, earning the top score for its 97% client retention rate, 22-year operating history, and 15-minute response commitment … Read more
A denied cyber insurance renewal almost always comes down to one of five gaps: unenforced MFA, partial EDR coverage, backups nobody has actually tested, no written incident response plan, or proof an underwriter can’t verify. Fix those, then reapply. Insurers never used to check much. A short form, an honest “yes” next to multi-factor authentication, … Read more
Cyber insurers don’t treat all MFA the same in 2026. “Enforced” means every account that touches email, remote access, or admin systems requires it, no exceptions, and CISA itself ranks the method you use from phishing-resistant down to SMS, the weakest option on the list. Two different questions get collapsed into one on most applications. … Read more
New York’s 23 NYCRR 500 cybersecurity regulation names insurance agents and brokers directly as covered entities, and even agencies small enough to qualify for the limited exemption still have to file an annual compliance certification, run a risk assessment, and enforce MFA. Most agency owners I talk to have heard of this regulation in passing. … Read more
Co-managed IT means your internal person or team keeps doing the work they’re good at, while an outside provider fills the specific gaps, after-hours monitoring, security tooling, overflow tickets, under a written split everyone agrees on ahead of time. It isn’t staff augmentation and it isn’t a takeover. It’s a third option most owners never … Read more
Most cyber insurance applications now ask about multi-factor authentication, endpoint detection and response, and tested offline backups, since federal cybersecurity guidance names all three as baseline controls insurers expect before writing or renewing a policy. Fill out the application the way you did three years ago and something will get flagged. Not rejected, necessarily. Flagged. … Read more
VJNetworks has run managed IT out of Rockland since 2004, through dial-up, the 2009 recession, and a threat landscape that now costs businesses billions a year. What changed is almost everything technical. What didn’t is who shows up when a client calls. I never planned any of this, honestly. I was the kid taking apart … Read more
Cyber insurers no longer take an applicant’s word for it. Having multi-factor authentication, EDR, and tested backups in place only helps your renewal if you can also produce records proving each one, on demand, which is a separate project from actually running the controls themselves. I see this gap constantly. A business has genuinely solid … Read more
Antivirus blocks files that match a known threat signature. EDR watches behavior across a device and can isolate or roll back an attack in progress, and that gap in capability is exactly what cyber insurers now probe for separately on renewal applications. Ten years ago, “we have antivirus” closed that line item. Nobody asked twice. … Read more
New York’s SHIELD Act requires almost every business holding a New York resident’s personal data to run a written data security program. A company with around 20 employees still counts as a “small business” under the law, which lowers the bar to “reasonable” safeguards instead of a detailed checklist. This comes up constantly. An owner … Read more
