Why does the agency need a communication map?
An agency may communicate through employee mail, an agency-management system, a marketing tool, and carrier portals. Your actual mix matters more than a generic list. We recommend separating messages sent under the agency's domain from messages sent by carriers or other organizations using their own identities.
The NAIC notes that insurers and producers handle sensitive consumer information. An email review should therefore account for where requests send the customer next, not just the appearance of the message. Identify which portal, phone route, or other approved process belongs to each type of request.
What should staff know about an unexpected request?
Agree who can verify a changed contact, document destination, or payment instruction. Use an established customer or partner record to find the verification route. Do not let the new request redefine both the action and the way it will be checked. Give staff a clear place to escalate uncertainty.
We recommend practicing with an ordinary fictional scenario in a team meeting: a familiar contact asks for a change, the usual representative is unavailable, and a deadline is approaching. The exercise should reveal who can pause the process and who provides the backup decision. It is a process rehearsal, not evidence that a real incident has occurred.
Which agency senders should be checked?
Start with employee mail, then ask operations and marketing about automated messages. For every tool that uses the agency's domain, record a business owner, the address customers see, and the person who manages configuration. Include infrequent messages such as renewal reminders when they are part of your actual workflow.
Request representative authentication evidence rather than assuming that a successful message from one account covers every tool. If a carrier sends from its own domain, record that boundary. A review of your agency's DNS cannot establish the carrier's account security or approve the content of its instructions.
- Name the service and its owner within the agency.
- Record the domain shown to the customer.
- Describe what the message asks the customer to do.
- Keep the test result and unresolved questions with the inventory.
What belongs outside an authentication review?
Mailbox access, staff permissions, document handling, retention, incident response, and regulatory duties need their own assessment. NIST's multi-factor authentication guidance addresses account access, a different control from public sending records. Keep these workstreams connected without allowing one completed task to stand in for all the others.
Do not use a passing DNS check as a compliance certificate or an assurance about a policy's response to a loss. Questions about applicable obligations and insurance coverage belong with the responsible professionals and the actual documents. No email configuration finding answers those questions by itself.
What should the owner ask for at handoff?
Ask for a short account of the agency domains and senders reviewed, the approved changes, the observed tests, and the remaining exceptions. Assign each exception to a person. The next useful step is the one that closes a named gap in your actual workflow, not a new security label for the website.