Prediction 4

Digital and physical executive protection become one program, with one owner

The prediction

Ownership of Digital Executive Protection will increasingly move to chief security officers and executive protection teams. Organizations will stop treating the executive’s personal digital life as an orphan risk, and assign it a named owner, a written scope, and a budget line.

Signals behind the prediction

Throughout the last 12 months we have witnessed a steady uptick in the number of executive protection teams taking ownership of the digital side of their work. “Physical attacks often start with the digital footprint. That online reconnaisance is the first thing a bad guy is going to do anywhere in the world, and it starts with a Google search,” notes Hazel Cerra, Director of Digital Security Convergence, BlackCloak. “For Executive Protection teams, arrival and departures demand heightened attention. Any digital information that reveals an executive’s location or timing can turn those moments into opportunities for an attacker.”

External signals that influenced this prediction

More than 1/3 of S&P 500 companies provided executive security perquisites in 2025¹.
Reported incidents targeting corporate executives doubled year over year 2024-25, many of which were physical².
Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett testified to Congress in July 2026 in support of a budget request covering both physical security and cybersecurity. Barrett described a swatting incident at her home, which requires an attacker to know a home address³.
Google Cloud has described attackers collecting executives’ routines, movements, family relationships, and travel schedules, and recommends integrating digital intelligence into physical security strategy⁴.

Why it is key for 2027

Executive protection will increasingly depend on coordination between physical security and cybersecurity teams. Reducing the executive’s digital exposure helps limit an adversary’s ability to identify their schedule, track their movements, and determine when they are most vulnerable. Together, these capabilities strengthen protection and can reduce the cost of responding to preventable threats. “Physical security and digital security teams need a shared understanding of threats to effectively protect the executive team. If you only have one and not the other, you only have one part of the executive protection program,” says Cerra.

Additionally, the tax and disclosure treatment of executive protection packages is under active review, and law firms are advising clients to document the boundary between business and personal use in writing. Once a company has to defend a security spend line to the IRS and to shareholders, an undocumented, unowned digital program becomes a governance problem.

Equilar, “Early Look: Executive Security Perks on the Rise,” April 2026, covering S&P 500 proxy filings through 7 April 2026. www.equilar.com
Security Executive Council, Executive Targeting Report: Analysis of Attacks on Corporate Executives from 2003-2025, February 2026. securityexecutivecouncil.com
CNBC and NBC News on the testimony of Justices Kagan and Barrett, 14 July 2026. www.cnbc.com www.nbcnews.com
Google Cloud, “Personal cyberattacks against executives are rising. Here’s how to stop them.” cloud.google.com