Security Design ReviewInsurancePublished March 4, 2026

Scaling Security Design Reviews in Insurance Without Slowing Down Development

Executive summary

What this whitepaper covers

Insurance carriers carry some of the most sensitive personal and financial data in any industry, and the regulatory stack around it keeps getting denser: the NAIC Insurance Data Security Model Law (now adopted by 22 plus US states), NYDFS Part 500, GLBA, and PCI-DSS where cards are processed. IBM's 2024 Cost of a Data Breach report puts the average breach at $4.88M, a 10% year-over-year jump. At the same time, 42% of organizations report having only 1 to 5 AppSec engineers total, which makes a manual SDR program mathematically impossible at modern release cadences. This whitepaper lays out how insurance AppSec teams can run security design reviews on every feature without slowing development down. It includes a case study of a global specialty insurance and reinsurance carrier (US and UK operations) that cut SDR turnaround from 4 days to 2 hours, and a phased rollout plan that fits within existing Jira and Confluence workflows.

Key findings

What you'll take away

  • ✦Regulatory stack for insurance AppSec: NAIC Insurance Data Security Model Law (22 plus US states), NYDFS Part 500, GLBA, and PCI-DSS
  • ✦IBM's 2024 Cost of a Data Breach report: $4.88M average, up 10% year over year, with financial services consistently above the mean
  • ✦42% of organizations report 1 to 5 AppSec engineers total; a manual SDR program across a modern release cadence is mathematically out of reach at that headcount
  • ✦Case study: global specialty insurance and reinsurance carrier (US and UK) cut SDR turnaround from 4 days to 2 hours with AI-assisted design reviews
  • ✦Rollout pattern that holds up in carriers: start in one product line, integrate with Jira and Confluence, expand to full coverage within 90 to 180 days
Download

Get the full whitepaper

Enter your details and we'll email you the PDF right away.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Which regulations most shape SDR in insurance?
The NAIC Insurance Data Security Model Law (now adopted by 22 plus US states), NYDFS Part 500, GLBA, and PCI-DSS where carriers process cards. GDPR and its local equivalents apply in every multinational program.
How realistic is full coverage with 1 to 5 AppSec engineers?
Not with a manual process. With AI-assisted SDR, carriers hit full coverage because the reviewer shifts from executing every review to overseeing output and handling the highest-risk features directly.
How quickly can we stand up an AI-assisted SDR program?
Expect 90 days to first measurable coverage and 180 days to a production program. The case study in this paper moved SDR turnaround from 4 days to 2 hours within the first quarter.
How does this fit with our existing Jira and Confluence workflows?
Seezo integrates directly with both. Engineering continues to write technical specs in the same place, and the security review runs off the same document without creating a separate queue.
Related resources

Keep reading

Security Design Review
Scale Security Design Reviews (SDR) for Modern AppSec Teams
Shift-left does not fail because developers resist security. It fails because the design stage never gets a seat at the table.
Feb 2026Read whitepaper
Security Design Review
Scaling Security Design Reviews in Medical Device Companies: A Modern, Compliant Approach
Medical device software lives under one of the densest regulatory stacks in technology: FDA premarket and postmarket cybersecurity guidance, FDA Section 524B, ISO 13485, the Quality System Regulation, IEC 62304, IEC 81001-5-1, HIPAA, and EU MDR. Audits rarely fault medical device companies for skipping SDR; they fault them for doing SDR inconsistently, with threat models that do not trace cleanly through the Design History File to mitigations, tests, and risk acceptance.
Feb 2026Read whitepaper