Cybersecurity experts have begrudgingly come to expect the threat landscape to go from bad to worse as new, sophisticated attacks continue to rear their ugly heads. The FBI’s new 2024 Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report— showing cybercrime losses exceeding $16 billion in 2024, a 33% increase over 2023 — headlines a wave of recent doom-and-gloom findings that further validate the experts’ cynicism and reinforce the notion that the war on cybersecurity will only worsen unless organizations and corporate leaders take immediate action to change its course.

The FBI report comes on the heels of a new 2025 Ponemon Institute research report, Faked to Perfection: The rise of deepfake threats against corporate executives, which revealed troubling trends in deepfake threats and AI-driven attacks—both of which are expected to increase in the months ahead.

The latest Verizon Business Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) also added to the grim picture for cybersecurity by revealing that third-party involvement in breaches has doubled to 30% while exploitation of vulnerabilities has surged by 34% in 2024. Ransomware attacks rose by 37% since last year and are now present in 44% of breaches, despite a noticeable decrease in the median ransom amount paid.

This perfect storm of warning signs is a proverbial wake-up call for corporate leaders, high-net-worth individuals, and family offices.

A deeper look at the FBI report highlights several growing dangers. These include cyber-enabled fraud—such as the theft of money, data, or identity, and the creation of counterfeit goods or services—as well as cyber threats like data theft, ransomware, viruses, malware, and disruptions to digital life. The report also underscores the rising threat of data breaches and attacks on critical infrastructure.

This shift toward highly targeted, profit-driven attacks puts high-profile individuals, executives, and their families directly in the line of fire. Furthermore, the IC3 report underscores the importance of safeguarding the digital footprints of high-net-worth individuals—and the need to move beyond simple data broker removal to a more holistic security approach.

We’ve been committed to this holistic security approach since our inception and recently released the first-ever Digital Executive Protection (DEP) Framework, defining comprehensive personal privacy and cybersecurity for business leaders. This framework aligns with the findings and recommendations in the IC3 report and reinforces the need for our holistic DEP platform and concierge of security services designed to provide a layered defense against cyber criminals across both digital and physical environments.

While removing an individual’s digital footprint from data broker sites and alerting them to dark web exposures is a good start, it’s just one part of a broader digital exposure protection (DEP) strategy and a comprehensive approach to security.

Keeping Pace with the latest Cybersecurity Threats and Scams

With new, sophisticated, and highly intrusive threats constantly knocking at the door, it’s critical that we stay ahead of cyber criminals by continuously monitoring, detecting, and remediating the latest threats. Cyber criminals won’t wait for us to catch up, so we need to be ready for anything and everything.

Case in point is the rise of deepfake deception.

According to the Ponemon Institute report, 54% of respondents surveyed said deepfakes are one of the most worrying uses of artificial intelligence (AI). In comparison, 42% of respondents surveyed say their executives and board members have been targeted at least once by a fake image or video. Through our ID Verification feature, part of our DEP solution, we can protect users against all scam and impersonation attacks, not just those that use AI or Deepfakes. It empowers users receiving a suspicious message, video, or phone call to verify the sender’s identity through the BlackCloak mobile app, ensuring content authenticity and preventing deepfakes and impersonation.

Redefining Perimeters: Hardening Personal Devices and Home Networks

There are no borders in cybersecurity. A holistic DEP approach includes monitoring our clients’ personal devices and home networks. We take a proactive security posture that identifies and mitigates potential risks before they can escalate to full scale breaches.

Hardening personal devices to prevent unauthorized access by optimizing privacy settings and fine-tuning configurations helps keep our clients’ digital life protected from cyber threats and privacy breaches. It’s also essential to conduct external network penetration tests on the public IP addresses of our client’s home network, and to harden firewall settings and connected devices to address vulnerabilities.

Extending DEP Capabilities to a Client’s Family Members to Fortify Security

Nation-states and cybercriminals will always choose the path of least resistance—and often that means infiltrating an individual’s family members to get to them.

Through a holistic DEP approach, loved ones are no longer easy points of entry because they are protected with the same security blanket as the individuals that BlackCloak specializes in protecting from both digital and physical risk.

Our cybersecurity packages for families include weekly home network scans, device monitoring (computers and mobile), identity theft protection and insurance, and continuous monitoring of the dark web and removal of personal information from data broker sites.