03-06-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
The family office fireside series: CEO/CFO shares how they manage cybersecurity risks
The Fireside is the most recent installment of Deloitte Private's Family Office Insights Series — a compilation of extraordinary interviews we have conducted with top family office executives. Representing some of the most prominent families in the world, they offer invaluable peer-led insights and advice that can help family offices navigate the playing field and plan for long-term success.
The following is an excerpt from 'Taking risk seriously: How one of the world's most prominent family offices protects the family's assets and reputation,' an interview with the CEO and CFO of one of the world's largest family offices describing a cyberattack their family office faced, and what safeguards they have put in place from both a cybersecurity and reputational management perspective.
What experience does your family office have with cyberattacks?
CEO/CFO: Cyberattacks happen all the time, but we have not had an attack that has been successful. In one attack, the level of sophistication was amazing. My assistant got an email from someone who knew I was speaking at a conference. The email was tailored to her as if it were from the event holders. Something seemed wrong, so she had our security team examine the email and they confirmed it was malware. Thankfully, she did not open the attachment.
expand
How do you manage reputational risk?
CEO/CFO: We have security employees who do daily monitoring of the internet and social media and look out for the family's reputational interests. I think we manage reputational risk well. We pay attention to what is being said, and we get in front of things if we think there is going to be an issue given that the person we work for is in the public eye. At the end of the day, it is the reputation of the family we are concerned about. I have almost no impact on how they conduct themselves, but we can impact how other people write about them or correct the record if they are saying things that are inaccurate.
