A cyber perspective on executive protection>
Security Magazine – Madeline Lauver
Physical and cybersecurity teams should work together to holistically evaluate risks to their executives. “There are a wide variety of threats targeting executives not only at work, but at home and in their personal lives,” says Malcolm Harkins, Chief Security & Trust Officer at Epiphany Systems. Threats targeting executives range from nation-state actors to organized cybercrime, hacktivists and insider threats, according to Harkins. While information technology (IT) and cybersecurity teams have systems in place to protect enterprise networks, executives’ personal networks can also open up the enterprise to cyber risk and need to be secured.

To mitigate these impacts, those responsible for physical executive protection in the enterprise should work alongside the cybersecurity team. According to Harkins, there are a number of steps physical and cybersecurity teams should take in tandem when protecting their principals.

First, it’s important for physical and cyber EP teams to evaluate the risks targeting their executives. Cyber executive protection can present challenges to security teams. One issue, for example, surrounds the question of duty of care. Is it the responsibility of corporate security teams to protect the homes of their executives. If an organization has made the decision to secure executive homes from physical threats, does that extend to cybersecurity? According to Harkins, physical executive protection teams and IT teams should start by “evaluating these risks, understanding how they are managed today, and determining a path to properly manage them.” Another challenge for security leaders to keep in mind is “the implication of having internal resources provide personal protection,” Harkins says. Harkins suggests balancing internal and external resources to maintain executive privacy while protecting them from physical and cyber threats. In an increasingly connected world, enterprise security teams must evaluate and respond to cyber risks faced by executives. “When both teams objectively evaluate the risks and partner as needed to address them, that should lead to the right level of management and mitigation for these risks,” Harkins says.
Link: https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/99187-a-cyber-perspective-on-executive-protection