In this threat landscape, it’s advisable to keep your friends close and your C-suite executives closer. Fortunately, one digital executive protection company is setting standards to ensure the latter can be done thoroughly.
BlackCloak has released a digital executive protection framework that intends to provide organizations with a set of holistic principles that can be followed to help secure executives and other high-level team members from cyber threats. The framework, which it claims is the first in the industry, has 14 areas of focus, including deepfake protection, personal device hardening, incident response, and physical protection.
Perfect timing. IT Brew spoke with BlackCloak founder and CEO Chris Pierson, who designed the set of standards in response to the interest he was seeing from security leaders for more digital executive protection guidance last year, especially following the death of former UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson, who was shot and killed in a targeted attack last year.
“More individuals, more executives, more chief information security officers, CISOs, and more chief security officers, CSOs, have really been asking for and wanting definitive guidance in a framework that is neutral [and] that addresses all the potential aspects of digital and data protection together,” Pierson said. He estimates that he saw a three-to-five-fold increase in inquiries from CIOs and CISOs following Thompson’s death.
Cyber criminals are also increasingly targeting C-suite executives and other high net worth individuals. In 2023, BlackCloak’s threat intelligence team observed an influx in doxxing and swatting attempts against executives. Pierson said the digital executive protection company also saw an increase in the targeting of its clients when they are traveling internationally and connecting to foreign networks.
Top insights for IT pros
From cybersecurity and big data to cloud computing, IT Brew covers the latest trends shaping business tech in our 4x weekly newsletter, virtual events with industry experts, and digital guides.
Hidden niche. While threats against high-level executives have been ongoing, the market around digital executive protection has yet to mature. Pierson told IT Brew that there are a number of consumer solutions available in the industry to address the risks that executives face, but none of them are quite equipped to provide “holistic protection.”
“These are consumer solutions that are designed for the everyday individual, without the threat of a nation state, without the threat of a cyber criminal, without the threat of an organized criminal syndicate targeting them,” Pierson said.
AJ Nash, CEO of Unspoken Security, an intelligence and security-focused consultancy and media company, added that there are very few companies in the industry who offer both physical and cybersecurity protection for executives.
“Generally speaking, executive protection has either been the heavy-duty, physical security SWAT team-esque former Secret Service folks and the cyber has been handled by companies who do like brand protection,” he said.
Achievable? Nash told IT Brew that the extent at which organizations adhere to the new framework will likely vary across the industry.
“Is it attainable? Yeah,” Nash said. “Is it something that people are going to spend the money on, to cover all 14 aspects of their framework? Probably not, if I’m being honest. I would hope they would, but there will be very few, if any, who do all 14.”