. Digital privacy is on everyone’s mind these days. According to a recent report from StartPage, “72% of Americans say they are “very concerned” to “extremely concerned” about their online privacy.”

Americans’ growing anxiety over their personal digital privacy should come as no surprise when considering there is now a new victim of identity theft every 2 seconds. Not to mention the thousands of online data brokers currently scouring the web in search of PII.

This is the first post of a four-part blog series on digital executive protection. Each week, we will discuss a specific benefit of BlackCloak’s holistic Concierge Cybersecurity and Privacy PlatformTM.

This first article explores the digital privacy risks to executives, high-net-worth and high-profile individuals, and how we help protect threats from manifesting.

Cybercriminals want your data

The availability of private personal data via data brokers and social media has made the job of cybercriminals infinitely easier. No longer are cyberattacks or fraud contingent upon a person downloading a malicious attachment or clicking on a malicious link.

Today, 98% of cyberattacks rely on social engineering, in which cybercriminals utilize personal or private information to create a connection, spoof a brand, or impersonate a colleague. Then, after building trust, they’re able to convince an unsuspecting person to take an action. This can include sharing login credentials, paying a fake invoice, or providing unauthorized access to an account.

Cybercriminals really want executives’ and high-profile individuals’ data

While most Americans’ identities are worth no more than $8 on the dark web, records of executives and high-net worth individuals are worth infinitely more. Last year, an auction of stolen celebrity data opened bidding up at $600,000. 

The abundance of compromised personal data is making executives vulnerable, too. In fact, C-suite executives are 12 times more likely to be targeted in cyber attacks than other employees in their organization, according to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). Attackers can make money from the company or employee data, intellectual property, or ransomware.

How we protect your digital privacy where security teams can’t 

The last thing your security team wants or needs is to have access to an executive’s personal life. Such visibility could expose you and your company to a plethora of privacy, legal, and disclosure risks.

Fortunately, protecting digital privacy is in BlackCloak’s DNA. In fact, our CEO Dr. Chris Pierson was once a Chief Privacy Officer for a large global bank. He was the first to recognize how the gap in privacy protections was negatively impacting the broader cybersecurity ecosystem.

BlackCloak helps executives and high-profile individuals gain peace of mind over their privacy concerns by offering:

  • Ongoing Data Broker Removal Services – Each month, our SOC scans more than 200 different data broker websites for your personal information. When your data is identified or when you share a website that you would like your data to be removed from, we file opt-out requests on your behalf. If the data broker prohibits third-parties from filing such requests, our concierge team walks you through the entire process. To avoid alert fatigue and disengagement, we dedupe records, curate alerts, and provide actionable details within every communication
  • Weekly Deep Dark Web Scans – Each week, our SOC deploys proprietary threat intelligence technology to scan the Deep/Dark web for exposed personal passwords. Whenever leaked credentials are discovered, we either alert you with the specific actions to take. Our concierge team walks you through the process on a call, or when applicable, remediates threats without your involvement.
  • Device Protection & Monitoring – During your onboarding process, we manually review and suggest changes to your privacy, security, tracking, and other settings on each of your Covered Devices, including mobile, laptops, tablets and computers. We limit location tracking to only the applications that absolutely need to know your whereabouts. We help get you set up on the National Do Not Call Registry. We also ensure operating systems are updated, install and configure a secure web browser and password manager. In addition, we help establish dual-factor authentication for the apps that require this added level of protection. For some clients, we set up a VPN for secure remote access. Our concierge team conducts this process each time a new device is added to your account. They collaborate with our security operations team to remediate emerging device threats and vulnerabilities that could impact your privacy.
  • Identity Theft & Credit Monitoring – During the onboarding process, our client service team helps setup credit and identity theft monitoring from our partner Experian. This membership supplements our digital privacy services. It keeps you apprised of your FICO score, changes to your credit file, and suspicious activity with your financial account. When suspicious activity occurs, you can freeze your credit  with one click in the BlackCloak app. This service also includes $1 million dollars of identity theft insurance and access to Experian customer support.

Your information remains private…even to us

We help maintain digital privacy protection without ever collecting social security numbers, birthdays, or other confidential PII. We’ll never have access to your web traffic and web search history. Your call logs, voicemails, text messages, photos, app usage, email content, streaming media, social media activity, payment methods and other financial information never crosses our desks.

Download our report, Executive Protection at Home is a Major Gap in Cybersecurity, for more information on how we protect your privacy.

Coming soon: The second article in this series will explore how BlackCloak helps secure your personal devices from cyberattack.