US commercial general contractor completes cyber intake for a builders risk renewal after audit findings.

An American commercial general contractor engaged LeakTrace ahead of a builders risk insurance renewal where the carrier had introduced a substantive cyber intake questionnaire for accounts above a defined enterprise value. The audit produced the documented posture the intake required.

Engagement origin

The contractor operates a commercial general contracting practice with approximately one hundred fifty staff across two American states. The builders risk carrier had introduced a cyber intake questionnaire referencing the current threat pattern against construction firms, with responses expected to be substantiated by documented posture rather than by principal attestation alone. The contractor's Chief Financial Officer engaged LeakTrace through the outside cyber broker referral network to produce the substantiating documentation.

Discovery scope

LeakTrace conducted a seventy-two-hour external attack surface audit covering the contractor's registered domain, executive and project management email patterns, public directory records, and vendor mapping. The audit was formatted specifically to substantiate the questionnaire responses on multi-factor authentication, business email authentication, endpoint detection, and vendor management.

Findings summary

• Executive credential exposure. Several executive email addresses appeared in monitored breach databases. Multi-factor authentication was enforced across the platforms accessed, but backup authentication methods for two executives reduced the strength of the posture below the intake questionnaire's baseline.
• Business email authentication. The contractor's Sender Policy Framework and Domain-based Message Authentication configuration were substantively current but required minor adjustment to meet the intake questionnaire's baseline.
• Vendor management documentation gap. DNS records disclosed several outsourced vendors serving different parts of the operation. The contractor's vendor management documentation covered the largest three vendors but not the tail, which the intake questionnaire treated as within scope.
• Project management platform exposure. The construction project management platform used by the contractor had received public security guidance in the prior quarter that had not been applied. The platform was central to project-related communication with subcontractors.

Contractor actions

The contractor executed a remediation program in the two weeks preceding the intake submission. Executive backup authentication methods were restricted to hardware tokens. Sender Policy Framework and Domain-based Message Authentication were revised. Vendor management documentation was extended to cover the tail. The project management platform's security guidance was applied. Each remediation was documented for reference in the intake response.

Outcome

The builders risk carrier bound the renewal at the pre-audit premium. The cyber intake questionnaire had been designed to identify accounts requiring a premium loading; the contractor's substantiated responses avoided the loading. The Chief Financial Officer retained LeakTrace for annual pre-renewal baseline refreshes.