Over the past decade, the evolution of the Internet and the proliferation of social media have created a digital minefield for business executives. In more recent years, the global pandemic and its subsequent socio-political further accelerated the world’s hyper-connectivity levels, leading to greater virtual threat levels than ever before. Meanwhile the realm of executive protection has been slowly transforming and advancing far beyond the traditional backdrop of a solely physical approach to protection services.
Executives are alarmingly at risk
Today, brands and their executives are encouraged to become an authority, in their respective fields, by taking a public stance on important macroeconomic issues – whether on social media or in the press. But in doing so, they inevitably become targets for disgruntled members of the public, or worse, criminals.
Attackers are increasingly weaponising the use of personal data that they freely obtain online through Open-source intelligence (OSINT) tactics, phishing scams and hacking campaigns to impersonate and threaten corporate leaders. It comes as no surprise that executives are amongst the most common targets for both physical and digital threats. They carry the highest profile and the widest access to sensitive and valuable information. According to a recent Data Breach Investigation Report, senior executives are, in fact, over 10 times more likely to be victims of social engineering incidents.
Most of the information behind these types of attacks stems from public search sites and data brokers. More concerning is that these websites are under no real legal obligation to disclose or remove this data. As a result anyone with an internet connection can quickly gain access to home address, identities, children’s names, email addresses, phone numbers and personal pictures. More sensitive data such as bank account numbers and passwords are widely available on the Dark Web – but, in some circumstances can appear in plain sight.
The impact of working from home
Adding a further layer of complexity to the situation is the fact that, post-pandemic many executives are spending more time working from home, away from the more protected environment of the office which often has the benefits of protected entrances, security guards, CCTV and cybersecurity measures. In many cases, executives have poorly secured homes – void of solid protective measures such as dedicated residential security teams and firewalls – and are using unsecure home networks, whilst sharing sensitive information and making critical business decisions that have the power to move economic markets, impact livelihoods and generate undercover enemies.
When employees work remotely, they’re often using their personal devices to access corporate networks. In some cases, they are not provided with company laptops and printers which can also cause vulnerabilities and security risks.
Organisations with good cybersecurity usually have virtual private networks (VPNs) and single sign-on solutions with encrypted tokens that keep everything secure, no matter the device that’s accessing the corporate network. But how many individuals would have the foresight to encrypt their smartphones or use a VPN to access the internet at home, even if they’re just checking their work voicemails?
Personal computers are typically not as secure as corporate ones. So, the security features that most employees take for granted, such as email filtering, firewalls, and encryption, might not be available, and corporate security teams will have no oversight into what’s going on. Without this extra security, corporate networks are at risk from hackers who may use these personal devices as entry points.
The intersection of physical and cybersecurity
Physical security and cybersecurity have long been approached in siloes, but with the rise of smart buildings and the interdependence of physical systems with Web-based or cloud-based networks, the boundaries between the two are becoming less visible.
To provide an optimum level of protection to an executive or indeed any principal, security leaders must think holistically across physical and cybersecurity realms. The security professional of the future must not only blend digital privacy and personal protection, they must also educate high-profile executives in understanding the benefits of being proactive against digital threats. This includes adopting relatively new methods such as regular digital audits, media monitoring and social listening to track what information is available online about an executive
Now, more than ever, keeping an executive safe means protecting that individual across every area – in the office, at home and in their digital sphere – including securing their personal information, devices and entire online footprint.