The Executive’s Guide to Digital Privacy: Protecting Leadership in the Information Age

This guide will help you understand how to protect your privacy and your business with actionable and practical strategies without requiring extensive cybersecurity knowledge.

It’s easy to understand why CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and other types of C-suite executives are the perfect target for cybercriminals.

High-level leaders have access to unique critical systems and online infrastructure, including top-secret portals, banking, data centers, and others, making them one-of-a-kind targets.

That, combined with the amounts of data you can exfiltrate about C-suite executives on corporate websites, press releases, and media interviews, worsens the situation since cybercriminals use this to carry social engineering attacks like BEC.

According to the 2022 FBI Internet Crime Report, BEC scams resulted in $2.3 billion in losses globally. After two years, that number reached $2.7 billion – nearly 20% more.

While regular cyberattacks are run in bulk and not always planned carefully, targeted attacks on executives are always strategically developed and methodically calculated due to the expected high return on investment of this type of attack.

Leaders aren’t just another user group within an organization’s network.

They are a well-defined target audience for cybercriminals, making leadership privacy fundamental to guarantee enterprise risk management.

Strong executive cybersecurity protocols and proactive protection of top leaders’ digital footprints are as crucial as audits and compliance.

Cybercriminals are continually upgrading their tactics on all fronts, including those targeting executives. They’re replacing generic spam or scam attempts with complex infiltration techniques, including:

• Executive impersonation: Fake LinkedIn profiles that look like real corporate accounts, websites that look legitimate but aren’t (domain spoofing), and deepfake audio or video that mimics an executive’s voice and appearance to trick the target.
• Spear phishing: Fake emails crafted from publicly available data that include personal details and real projects. This makes the email appear legitimate and bypasses general skepticism and filters.
• BEC: Attackers compromise or spoof a leader’s mailbox, getting access to all its private communication. This, combined with insider knowledge, can be extraordinarily effective. It can be used to instruct employees to transfer funds, share sensitive information, or disrupt business operations.
• Vishing: Fraudsters use phone calls or voice messages to impersonate organizations, such as banks and government agencies, and trick executives into divulging confidential information. Most of the time, these attacks are planned to coincide with events when the sender’s verification is more challenging to obtain, such as meetings or while traveling.
• Smishing: Cybercriminals send fraudulent text messages (SMS) to executives with urgent warnings and malicious links that seem to come from legitimate organizations.

Social media is also a centralized source of information, where anyone (including cybercriminals) can learn about the CEO’s next move, including meetings, trips, and conferences – an undeniable security threat that can be exploited physically or digitally.

In general, leaders must be highly skeptical of suspicious communication attempts, such as emails requesting confidential information, text messages from individuals claiming to be their assistants, or calls from ‘IT’ inquiring about recent trips.

The first line of defense against cybercriminals is the executives themselves, who should recognize these patterns and escalate suspicious requests before any harm is done.

Most executives have no idea how much private data about them is already online and would probably be shocked to know that the answer is a LOT.

The issue is that data brokers create detailed profiles by aggregating vast amounts of publicly available information.

The data is collected from social media posts, corporate websites, purchase history, online activity, and public records, and contains sensitive information such as home addresses, family details, property ownership, and income.

As you could have guessed, companies holding sensitive data are prime targets for cybercriminals, resulting in dangerous data breaches where high-value C-suite executive information ends up on the dark web.

With sufficient information, malicious actors might be able to answer password reset questions or impersonate someone of trust.

A common problem leading to such sensitive information ending up in the wrong hands is the ‘nothing to hide’ mentality, which makes leaders share too much online.

Although it’s understandable that CEOs and other C-suite executives want to connect with their audience, sharing too much can lead to identity theft and various other issues.

Executives should be vigilant at all times, but even the most sharp-eyed leader can’t guarantee data security if the company doesn’t offer a secure network infrastructure.

There must be an organizational commitment to prevent the theft of private data, starting with the inclusion of executive privacy safeguards in corporate governance policies.

Additionally, cybersecurity training must be mandatory for all employees and leaders, particularly in recognizing executive impersonation scams. After suspecting such a situation, there should also be a portal for reporting it within a unified communication platform.

In essence, when there’s coordination between executive protection teams, cybersecurity experts, and IT teams, the risk of being a victim of data theft is significantly reduced.

Measuring program effectiveness also helps.

Tracking the number and severity of threats within a specified time range, recurrence rate, and response times, consolidate accountability, promote continuous improvement, and reinforce the value of risk mitigation investments.

There are tools that can be especially effective in business data protection.

Scalable enterprise solutions are now offering data removal services on an organizational scale to protect high-profile employees. Optery, for example, provides automatic personal data removal for executive teams. It continuously scans and removes confidential information from the internet, giving proof that it has been completely deleted.

By integrating executive protection with enterprise-wide security policies, you’re ensuring business continuity, as well as supporting the business’s growth and reputation.

The link between reputation management and digital privacy for executives is undeniable.

A single data breach can quickly become a PR nightmare for any company and its leader, leading to distrust from the public, loss of stakeholders, and even bankruptcy in the most serious cases.

Once again, proactiveness is the key.

Continuous monitoring of executive mentions across platforms with alerting tools enables businesses to remove sensitive online information before it is disseminated and weaponized.

Upon receiving an alert, an incident response protocol should be in place involving all branches of the organization, including cybersecurity, PR, and legal, to minimize the available attack surface for malicious actors.

Legal operations, such as privacy right claims and takedown notices, as well as long-term reputation recovery efforts, should also be used to manage reputation damage. Strengthening public perception also entails displaying transparency, publicly informing about security improvements, and reinforcing any positive information available.

If you’re an executive or administrator, there are three critical action items you can implement immediately to protect your digital privacy: conduct a data exposure assessment, switch to secure communication services, and deploy ongoing data removal solutions.

Remember, implementing those three simple preventive actions is way cheaper than the financial burden of a data breach.

One of the best ways to guarantee control over personal information on the internet is to use services like Optery, which automatically scans the web for your data, verifies it, and deletes it.

Based on available statistics, it’s fair to say that leaders and executives will continue to be targets of increasingly sophisticated and efficient cyberattacks.

So, when it comes down to it, executives who take control of their digital footprint are a step ahead in safeguarding not only their business’s integrity and reputation, but also their own.