The rich are being targeted by hackers, leading wealth managers, family offices and executives to hire cybersecurity concierges for personal and home devices.
High-profile hacking cases, like Jeff Bezos’ phone, and Bill Gates and Elon Musk’s Twitter accounts, highlighted in recent years how vulnerable wealthy individuals can be to cyberattacks.
"Now the low-hanging fruit are high-net worth families, some of which have the resources of big companies with hundreds of millions or even billions, but are not as secure," said Bill Roth, CEO of HardTarget, a cyber resilience firm for high-net worth families, advisors and family offices. The secrecy surrounding breaches compounds the problem because many wealthy people aren't aware of how often breaches happen. Families don't have to disclose a breach, unlike companies or wealth managers. They're also likely to keep quiet about any breach out of embarrassment.Anwar Visram, co-founder of HardTarget, recalled how one family reached out after the son encountered an extortion scheme that moved from Tinder to Instagram.
According to a JPMorgan Private Bank's 2024 Global Family Office Report, 24% of family offices surveyed said they had been exposed to a cybersecurity breach or financial fraud. Despite this, 20% do not have cybersecurity measures in place. "A lot of things you can do yourself, but we do evaluate where we see their need is," she said. She recalled one client, a family with seven children, each with five devices, and knew that changing passwords on all 35 devices would be a lot of work, so"that's where we might suggest a concierge," she said.Cyber concierges are helping to fill in the cybersecurity gaps. Family offices, like small- and medium-sized businesses, are an underserved market.
According to a 2023 survey of IT professionals by Ponemon Institute, sponsored by BlackCloak, 42% of respondents said their executives and family members were attacked by cybercriminals, and 25% of respondents said they had experienced an average of seven attacks or more in the past two years.
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