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Let鈥檚 say you鈥檙e a successful business owner or CEO. You鈥檝e put a lot of thought into keeping your family and your聽high-value assets聽safe, investing in the latest home-security and surveillance systems, high-quality window and door locks, maybe even your own personal security detail. You can rest easy, right? Well, what if your teenager down the hall is visiting websites infected by malware, your partner is posting details of your birthday party on social media, your home-security system uses a weak password, and the wireless network you鈥檙e using to get some work done is unsecured?

You鈥檝e just left the door wide open to cybercriminals.

While many high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals鈥攁long with their families, family offices and family businesses鈥攈ave physical security down pat, they鈥檙e聽increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks. In the criminal world, it only makes sense to go where the money is, but it鈥檚 not just wealth that makes financially successful individuals attractive targets. They鈥檙e often in the public eye (which can give criminals information to leverage in an attack), and they usually don鈥檛 have the same level of security controls in place as their work environments鈥攕omething cybercriminals know to exploit.

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What should individuals be on the lookout for? Typical cyberattacks against these individuals and families aren鈥檛 all that different from those in the business world: phishing, social engineering, identity theft and ransomware are some of the most common ones. However, with the explosion in technology, people who have achieved a high degree of financial success are vulnerable in practically every corner of the home, through Internet-connected appliances, smart-home systems, electronic devices and more. All these vulnerabilities leave them exposed to financial risks and reputational damage, as cybercriminals might demand big payouts and publicly release private information anyway.

For people who are used to having their own IT departments at work, there鈥檚 a lot to consider when it comes to聽personal聽cybersecurity. Let's assume you do some of your work at home. Does the information technology environment in your home have the same level of security controls as your business? Are you on phone calls discussing board-related issues near a voice-activated appliance that鈥檚 triggered by keywords? What support systems do you have independent of your business? To what level does your family office or business extend that protection to you? To what degree do you want your business monitoring your personal and private life?

In our work, we can clearly see that separation between what鈥檚 happening in our clients鈥� personal lives and their business lives is critical. Let鈥檚 say a family members鈥� personal computer gets infected with malware. If you went to your business鈥檚 IT contact to fix the problem, you鈥檇 potentially be revealing the private life of your family member, which you might not want to do. More likely, you want an advisor who handles your personal cybersecurity separately from your business.

It鈥檚 also a full-time job to stay on top of increasingly complex and evolving attacks. Even trained eyes fall for phishing attacks, which trick people into divulging sensitive information or downloading malware. Social media is also giving rise to new types of attacks, as people share their location, photos and personal details online. That鈥檚 useful information to break-and-enter artists who know what time someone leaves and comes home from the gym every day. But cybercriminals can use the information people post to carry out social engineering attacks, such as impersonating someone they know and tricking them to send money.

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To establish a degree of separation between home life and work life, a personal chief information security officer (CISO) as an on-demand service can work with you to assess, prevent, monitor and respond to cyber threats. Meanwhile, online platforms or 鈥渄igital vaults鈥� are also ways to keep valuable documents鈥攊ncluding tax returns, passports, wills, and insurance and real-estate documents鈥攊n a safe, encrypted environment. As a personal cybersecurity service for our clients, we鈥檙e the ones they call for help, which offers them privacy and peace of mind.

If you鈥檙e ready to have a conversation about your personal cybersecurity and how to protect yourself and your family, please reach out.