The Importance of Executive Protection
by MNJR | April 05, 2024 | Category: Diode
Today, digital executive protection extends beyond corporate networks — it’s about reducing cybersecurity and privacy risks for executives in their personal lives as well. Often, the same devices are used for an executive’s business and personal activities. This can result in cybersecurity risks to your organization from the executive’s personal work.
Executives collaborate with colleagues, partners, board members, and professional services providers (such as lawyers, consultants, bankers, or accountants). This is often done without using the secure technologies used in other parts of an organization.
Therefore, protecting an executive’s digital footprint must include securing both business and personal activities. This requires the use of secure messaging and secure remote access technologies in both environments. Without a holistic approach, executives and teams tempt fate as hackers seek to exploit every point of vulnerability to compromise sensitive and regulated data entrusted to their organization.
Diode’s tools never store data on a server and ensure the communications and information-sharing are all end-to-end encrypted between the executive and their collaborators.
Market/Regulatory Factors
Digital privacy laws are advancing globally, creating a complex regulatory environment. In the US, regulations are inconsistent between states and federal authorities, posing challenges for compliance. This complexity demands extra care, especially for organizations in heavily regulated industries.
As privacy rights have evolved, so has the significance of data privacy. From the mid-20th-century data collection, to today’s Internet era, privacy concerns have grown alongside online activities. Regulations such as GDPR and CCPA have shaped the landscape, requiring companies to take intentional steps to protect sensitive information.
Increasing Threat Landscape
The cybersecurity landscape faces threats directed both at large corporations and mid-market enterprises. Breaches cost small and medium-sized businesses an average of $25,000 per incident, and can lead to extended operational downtimes averaging 277 days.
In recent years, ransomware attacks capable of disrupting or halting operations have surged in frequency and scope. Ransomware targets have expanded from organizations with personally identifiable information (PII), to critical infrastructure and supply chain entities. At the same time, the sophistication of ransomware attacks has increased to include triple extortion and ransomware as a service (RaaS). Relatively recent attacks on entities like the British Royal Mail and Boeing demonstrate the disruption the consequences that ransomware can cause.
Ransomware is now involved in 24% of all breaches, and affected 66% of organizations in 2023. The average cost of a ransomware attack has skyrocketed to $4.35M per attack - a level that can bankrupt or severely damage a business. These escalations in both scale and impact underscores the need for further security measures.
Executive Collaboration and Unintended Risks
Executive communications on messaging and collaboration platforms pose significant risks, with 71% of global employees, including 68% in the US, sharing sensitive data through these tools. This can expose companies to compliance violations and expanded breach risks. Moreover, employees often retain copies of shared information on their own devices, heightening the vulnerability to fines and legal action. And Email, the most common productivity tool, remains cybercriminals’ top target due to the high attack success rate and minimal effort required.
These communication tools are increasingly targeted by hackers seeking to exploit executives’ access to sensitive company information. Personal data, varying from political affiliation to Amazon wish lists, fuel these crimes as companies legally collect vast amounts of data that can be sold to bad actors. As a result, executives face heightened risks of “whaling” attacks, where individuals impersonate them to solicit money or information from other team members and vendors.
Concerns and Essential Nature of Confidentiality
Unauthorized access to confidential information poses severe risks. Financial losses and legal liabilities are a direct result of the resulting data theft, fraud, system sabotage, and data destruction.
Executives face heightened risks because they are high value targets - they have access to critical operations and sensitive data such as financial authorizations, intellectual property, and business strategies. The typical attacks prey on weak authentication, phishing, software vulnerabilities, physical device security, and insider compromise. Because executives and organizations face severe consequences if an executive’s communications are exposed, it is paramount to safeguard them.
Summary
Enterprises and organizations must prioritize digital executive protection and take proactive steps to mitigate risks and ensure leadership safety.
While their organizations are often highly secure within their perimeters, today’s business environment requires frequent collaboration by leaders with their board members, peers in other organizations, and service providers on sensitive topics and projects. Even messaging and information sharing between executives and senior team leaders in the same organization can warrant a distinct security solution.
Investment in comprehensive strategies to safeguard against digital threats at every level of your organization is essential for organizational stability and success.
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