Jim Trainor joined Aon’s Cyber Solutions organization as Senior Vice President in October 2016, and brought with him an impressive and unique skillset. Prior to joining Aon, he spent 20 years at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), where he finished his career as one of the agency’s top experts on cybercrime.

During his time with the Bureau, he led a team of very talented and skilled FBI professionals who worked on some of the nation's highest profile cyber breaches. Jim was recently recognized for his contributions to the FBI with the Presidential Rank Award, a prestigious honor given annually to a select group of senior leaders working in the U.S. federal government. He was commended for his exceptional performance and professional achievements during his 20 years of service at the FBI.

Jim shares his perspective about his move to the private sector, and how his expertise will help us continue to evolve Aon’s cyber solutions offerings for clients:

After 20 years in the FBI, why did you decide to join Aon?
When I was in the FBI, I saw how the insurance industry could drive some of the best behavior and really help improve not just the companies we work with, but the country. Essentially, the FBI and now firms like Aon, are working to establish a more secure cyber environment. Computer intrusions cost an estimated $400 billion annually, and most companies are either uninsured or underinsured, so they're absorbing those losses.  Seeing the opportunity that Aon has to protect companies through an integrated approach—that was attractive for me.

How do you plan to use your experience to help clients?
I have a lot of experience in incident response. The Sony attack was probably the most significant because in that particular case, we saw many cyber threats occur all at once. Responding to these breaches requires an understanding of the legal environment, the technical environment, privacy issues, media-related issues and more.  There are not a lot of people who have learned to navigate that space. They've done one particular part, but they haven't seen it all come together. So that's the experience that I've had—I've dealt with attacks like that certainly more times than I wanted to.

What makes Aon's cyber solutions so exceptional?
All the work we do in cyber is brought together in a holistic way to develop integrated solutions that solve the diverse and distributed risks our clients face. We are addressing these challenges from both a technical and insurance perspective. There's no one in this space that can match that.