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Safeguarding Executives in the Digital World
Recognizing Risks and Strengthening Security
Managing Human Risk in the Digital Age
It takes a combination of people and technology to attribute and solve executive protection problems and drive real-world consequences.
Corporate security and executive protection teams face an increasingly complex challenge, managing human risk amid the growing digital threat landscape. Threats to key personnel, both from inside and outside the organization, are escalating. The rise of social media and other online platforms has broadened the attack surface, exposing executives to risks ranging from reputational damage to cyber-attacks, fraud, and even physical harm.
Personal details, including personally identifiable information (PII), shared online can be weaponized against executives, their families, and organizations. While executive transparency and visibility are critical for business success, it also amplifies their exposure to potential threats.
Corporate security teams often lack the resources to efficiently identify threat actors targeting key personnel on social media, extremist forums, and the dark web. Going beyond the data to identify and provide answers around genuine threats requires time, tools, and experience. Given the constant nature of these threats, delays in response can cause irreversible damage to an individual’s safety and reputation, as well as create serious consequences for the organization.
7 Ways Executives’ Digital Footprints Pose Personal and Business Risks
- Pattern of Life Exposure: These are details that an employee (or family member) shares via social media and other digital channels. Threat actors leverage these details to establish a pattern of life to facilitate stalking, surveillance, and harassment.
- Opinion Outrage: Expressing opinions on controversial issues can make executives the target of activists or hacktivists. Issues that may not relate to the business can cause outrage and motivate attacks.
- Personally Identifiable Information (PII): Unintended exposure of personal information continues to create a risk to executives. A wide range of data (including utility records, voting records, property records, campaign donations, and more) can be used by threat actors.
- Doxxing: Doxxing refers to the intentional publishing of an individual’s sensitive or protected identifiable information on the open internet. Doxxing is increasingly used to blackmail, threaten, and intimidate executives and their family members.
- Credential Theft: Executives are 12x more likely to be targeted in a data breach, and c-suite credentials represent one of the most prized targets for hackers. Executives suffer from the same poor cyber hygiene as their subordinates, though they have access to more information. Password reuse and risky online site engagement are not uncommon.
- Business Email Compromise: Attackers can dupe employees by posing as an executive or emailing a finance department member with an urgent request for a funds transfer. Despite cybersecurity education, employees continue to fall for these attacks.
- Impersonation and CEO Fraud: Fraudulent email, phone calls, text messages, and in some cases, deep-fake videos are used to prey on employees and associates of executives.
Given these diverse and evolving threats, safeguarding executives requires a proactive, multi-layered approach that goes beyond traditional security measures. While the threats are multifaceted, and can stem from online exposure, there are actionable steps that executives and corporate security teams can take to reduce vulnerabilities. By understanding potential dangers and taking deliberate steps to manage their digital presence, executives can better protect themselves, their families, and their organizations.
Below are four essential tips to bolster digital security for executives:
Strengthening Executive Security: 4 Key Tips
Tip 1: Limit Sharing of Personal Details
Transparency can inadvertently expose executives to threats. Sharing seemingly harmless details to connect with audiences can offer threat actors a blueprint for stalking or harassment. Be cautious when sharing details about routines, locations, and personal connections, as these can increase physical and digital vulnerabilities and be exploited by those with malicious intent.
Getting a view of your executive through the eyes of an adversary can help you determine the potential impact of any exposure.
Tip 2: Thoughtful Engagement and Opinion Expression
While 77% of consumers prefer companies with active executives on social media, participation can be a double-edged sword. Expressing opinions or stances on issues can make executives targets for activists, hacktivists, or other social media threats, even if the topics have no direct relation to the business.
Being mindful of the potential consequences of expressing opinions and staying ahead of any concerning chatter can help executives avoid becoming focal points for outrage.
The unintentional revelation of personal information is a pervasive issue. Executives often reveal personal details on social media. At the same time, other information like utility records, voting records, and property ownership is available online and on the dark web.
Limiting the exposure of information through regular PII reduction is especially important for high-visibility executives and their families.
Executives are prime targets for cyberattacks, including credential theft and business email compromise. Implementing strong cyber hygiene practices, using unique passwords, and being cautious about clicking on links can mitigate the risk of phishing attempts, but they are only half the battle.
Regularly scouring the open, deep, and dark web for evidence of credential exposure and other digital vulnerabilities to your people can help you prevent a significant security event.
Proactive Security Through Human Risk Intelligence
It’s critical to unmask threat actors to effectively diffuse the human threat. Attribution, while essential, is complex and requires specialized expertise, tradecraft, and tools.
Nisos analysts identify emerging threats to executives through open source monitoring and investigations on social media, extremist forums, and the dark web. With Nisos’ Executive Shield, clients get access to an extensive team of intelligence experts to augment their security team’s executive protection capabilities. From intelligence gathering and analysis of emergent human risks, we help your security teams protect executives and their families from a range of dangers including fraud, doxxing, cyber-attacks, reputational damage, and physical threats.
Our unique analyst-led, technology-empowered approach addresses human risk by reducing exposure and mitigating threats.
We conduct thorough risk assessments that give you clear visibility into your executives’ digital footprint, highlighting digital vulnerabilities and sensitive data like PII that could be exploited.
Nisos reduces risk by regularly reviewing the individual’s digital footprint and manually removing PII. Additionally, we investigate and monitor emerging threats that target your executives and their families, and unmask who is behind the threat. This proactive approach helps minimize risks, enables security teams to drive real-world consequences, and protects the executive and their organization.
Want to learn more about Nisos executive protection?
About Nisos®
Nisos is the Managed Intelligence Company. We are a trusted digital investigations partner, specializing in unmasking threats to protect people, organizations, and their digital ecosystems in the commercial and public sectors. Our open source intelligence services help security, intelligence, legal, and trust and safety teams make critical decisions, impose real world consequences, and increase adversary costs. For more information, visit: https://www.nisos.com.