“Every Business Deserves the Right to Survive a Cyberattack” – Cork Protection’s Dan Candee on Why SMBs Need Cash, Not Claims

We all pay our premiums thinking we will be covered - but when the moment comes, it rarely feels that simple. The forms, the exclusions, the waiting - it’s like the protection you thought you had suddenly turns into a puzzle. That couldn’t be truer in cybersecurity right now. Attacks don’t wait for paperwork, and the damage starts long before anyone approves a claim. What businesses really need is help in the moment - not weeks or months down the line.

Especially for small and midsize businesses, cyber insurance has become both a safety net and a source of stress. Premiums keep going up, claims take forever, and half the language feels like it was written for someone else.

And if you’re an MSP, you’re often stuck in the middle - trying to reduce your client’s risk while wrestling with rising costs and unclear coverage.

That’s where Cork Protection comes in. They’re calling themselves a “cyber warranty” company - not an insurance replacement, but a rethink of what financial protection should look like in real time.

I sat down with Dan Candee, Co-Founder and CEO of Cork Protection, to talk about how their model works, how it fits next to traditional cyber insurance, and why he thinks every business deserves a real shot at getting back on its feet after a breach.

MSSP Alert: Let’s start with the basics. You describe Cork as a cyber warranty company. What does that really mean - and how is it different from traditional cyber insurance?

Dan Candee: The short answer is: we’re built to help small and mid-sized businesses survive a cybersecurity event in real time.

Traditional cyber insurance is reactive. It’s an important safety net, but payouts often take months - and the average SMB only has 18 days of cash flow on hand. Our model is different. We created a cyber warranty that injects immediate financial relief into the recovery process.

Our warranty is built for immediacy and liquidity. If a Cork-protected client is hit, we issue a $10,000 electronic credit card within an hour so the MSP can act right away - hire incident response, restore systems, whatever’s needed. We also reimburse out-of-pocket expenses like ransom or ACH fraud within 14 days. The point is to keep business operations alive while everything else gets sorted out.

And we’re not competing with insurance. We complement it. Cork actually pays the cyber insurance deductible, which lets a business raise that deductible and lower its premium. So when they do need to file a claim, they’re better positioned financially.

MSSP Alert: Give me a real-world example of the problem you’re seeing.

Dan Candee: We helped a manufacturer whose vendor was compromised months earlier. The actors watched emails and invoices, learned how the company communicates, and then ran a clean-looking ACH scheme. The company lost about $325,000. We’re seeing more of this - criminals using AI and social cues to trigger urgency: “You’re behind on this invoice - please pay today.” People get rushed and send more money. It’s emotional engineering at scale.

MSSP Alert: How do you make that model work at scale? You mentioned integrating directly with the MSP’s tech stack.

Dan Candee: We’re a super-connector for risk insight. In under an hour and for under a dollar per endpoint, we integrate with the MSP’s stack—RMM, MFA, EDR/EDR, BCDR, SaaS backups, email security, SAT, professional services data, and more. We turn that telemetry into business intelligence that validates security and compliance in real time.

That gives us a real-time view into compliance and security posture across every endpoint. Because we can see that data, we can prove what controls were in place at the time of an incident. That’s the big difference. We’re not asking MSPs to fill out static questionnaires that go stale after 24 hours - we’re validating in real time.

The outcome is tangible: across the last 12 months and 3.3 million compliance events, we’ve seen Cork-managed clients be 94.3% more secure than non-Cork clients. The point is to reduce attacks and, when something does happen, move money fast so the business keeps running.

MSSP Alert: Where do most customers discover blind spots between what they think is covered and what actually pays?

Dan Candee: Cyber insurance evolved from the enterprise down, and SMBs aren’t all the same. A 100-person law firm with 10,000+ sensitive records needs policies tuned for data exposure, brand harm, and business interruption. A construction company moves a lot of money with vendors and is constantly targeted for ACH/wire fraud and BEC. Those risks are different, but too often the policies look the same.

Our approach is inside-out and data-driven: understand how the business really operates, close the practical gaps, and match financial protection to the most likely losses.

MSSP Alert: You launched a Cyber Insurance Analyzer earlier this year. What problem is that solving?

Dan Candee: It’s solving confusion and risk by assumption. MSPs aren’t allowed to sell or advise on insurance, but they’re the ones fielding all the questions from clients. We built the Cyber Insurance Analyzer (CII) as a free, AI-powered Sherpa that helps MSPs walk through coverage gaps confidently.

They can drag and drop any PDF policy into the tool, and within two minutes, it produces a two-page summary - what’s covered, what’s not, and where the blind spots are. That conversation used to take hours or not happen at all. Now it’s instant and risk-free for the partner.

One of the biggest gaps we see is misalignment between coverage and business model. Cyber insurance products were originally built for enterprises. So you might see a law firm and a construction company getting similar policies, even though their exposures are completely different - one handles sensitive data, the other manages large wire transfers. The CII helps bring that nuance back into the discussion.

MSSP Alert: AI is obviously part of your analyzer - how do you make sure those recommendations are trustworthy?

Dan Candee: We treat AI as a co-pilot, not the driver. The Analyzer uses agentic AI to summarize policies, but every result comes with context and human oversight. There’s a disclaimer, just like in ChatGPT, because results can vary. The goal isn’t to replace expertise; it’s to make expertise usable.

At Cork, our motto is “success is love plus performance.” Love means integrity and compassion. Performance is doing the work - thinking critically, verifying results, and acting with purpose. AI helps us scale that intent, but we’re always behind the wheel.

MSSP Alert: Where do you see the cyber warranty space heading, and where does Cork fit into that future?

Dan Candee: I believe every business has the right to survive and thrive through cyber and financial attacks. That means delivering value every day in security, compliance, and financial confidence. The ecosystem will stay disrupted by cyber threats; our inside-out risk understanding plus fast financial protection is a simple, consumable way to protect at scale.

The next three years are about 'reach'. We just celebrated Cork’s third anniversary, and growth has been incredible. My hope is that by our sixth, we’ll be protecting thirty times as many businesses - helping MSPs turn cybersecurity from a cost into a confidence multiplier.

At the end of the day, this business runs on trust. The MSP-client relationship is built on love and respect, and when we meet that energy with data, partnership, and accountability, we make the whole ecosystem stronger.