Executive Protection | the importance of Social Media

VIPs and High Net-Worth Individuals not only confront physical security risks at home and abroad but are also specifically targeted in their digital lives. Social media plays a large role in targeted attacks and is increasingly vulnerable to compromise breaches and other cyber threats. Using online data is essential for securing a Principal, whether mitigating non-targeted threats or dealing with personally identifiable information online. Knowing how and where to find this information can make a huge difference in how quickly Executive Protection Operatives (EPO’s) can contain an active threat and their ability to prevent future attacks.

A quick Google search for a Principal’s name gives a security team a lot of useful information: How high-profile are they? Are they received positively or negatively by the public, and how does this vary in different parts of the world? However – not all data relevant to an Executive Protection strategy is searchable in search engines.
Keeping track of social media profiles can aid security teams in several ways. It helps you understand what’s going on in a Principals life and what’s important to them. Being aware of context that is meaningful to a client is an essential skill in Executive Protection. By observing a Principal’s activity on social media – and what others are doing regarding the Principal – can dramatically improve your protective practices.

Online posts may seem harmless—but they do leave opportunity for an individual’s online profile to exploit their identity. Many social media users publicly post information that they don’t realise could be exploited by cyber criminals. Capturing the image of an ID card, the inside of a facility, or even a pet could be all an attacker needs to gain system access or answer a security question. Security teams should track what information the Principal and family members are posting on social media and monitor that content for potential risks.

Geo-enabled social media postings through location-based services (LBS) create even more opportunity for physical risk. Having a close awareness of a Principal’s physical whereabouts coupled with ‘regular’ social media posts can also increase time and place predictability. Security teams can combat this by using surveillance detection and mixing up routes, so the principal is not commuting via the same streets at the same time every day. Keep access to itineraries to the absolute minimum.

Establishing good threat intelligence practices and by assessing public content across multiple providers allow security to establish a complete and thorough risk profile for their client and immediate company. This, in turn, allows them to evolve their protective services to best suit the potential risks identified. Given today’s digital landscape, the first step in protecting the digital privacy of your executive is to make it as hard as possible to find out information that would be useful in any form of attack, be it digital or physical.

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