What is executive protection?
Executive protection refers to security measures designed to prevent both physical and cyber threats directed towards a company’s high-level employees and partners, such as executives, VIPs, and board members.
NordStellar’s cybersecurity-focused executive protection solution enables you to pick high-profile employees of your company, get alerts if their data appears in a data breach or a dark web forum, track exposure in real time, and respond quickly. Cybercriminals often target executives because of their access to sensitive data. Identifying vulnerabilities and knowing who's being targeted helps you prevent cyberattacks.
Common digital threats facing executives
Company executives are up to 12 times more likely to be targeted by cybercriminals. Because they have access to sensitive data, financial assets, and personal information, threat actors can spend months collecting data about their habits, devices, and family lives and preparing for an attack. Anything that exposes personal or company information is a digital threat to executives:
Dark web exposure
Business and personal data sold on the dark web makes the executives easy targets for attacks.
Phishing attacks
Executives are more likely to be targeted with personalized phishing tactics.
Zero-day exploits
Cybercriminals identify the devices an executive uses and search for unpatched vulnerabilities to exploit.
Credential theft and account takeovers
Hackers will use phishing, malware, and data breaches to steal an executive’s credentials and take over their accounts.
Social engineering
Publicly available information can be used in social engineering attacks to build trust and deceive executives or their assistants into sharing sensitive details.
Why is executive protection critical?
Clicking on the wrong link online can have dire consequences for the entire company. But when a cybercriminal takes over an executive’s account, they gain an all-access pass to the company's secrets, financial assets, and security systems. Digital executive protection isn’t just important — it’s as critical as physical protection. Here are a few examples why executive protection is critical:
Executive protection services focus on identifying threats to the company’s high-ranking employees, VIPs, and partners — the most at-risk individuals within the company. Protecting a small number of key personnel protects the entire organization.
Data breaches and ransomware attacks that involve CEOs are highly publicized, often leading to a significant hit to the company’s reputation and customer trust. Legal battles, investigations, and regulatory fines can drag on for years, preventing the company from recovering its reputation. Executive protection can help prevent cyber attacks and years of reputational damage.
What devices an executive uses personally and what services they subscribe to at home can be key to the company’s security. Executive security measures extend to personal accounts so security teams can identify and mitigate threats before they escalate.
Not all cyber threats come from outside the company. Disgruntled employees or accidental data leaks can expose confidential information. Executive protection services can find stolen confidential data and help identify the source of the leak.
How does NordStellar’s executive cyber protection work?
NordStellar’s executive protection is a multi-layered process that combines monitoring for suspicious activity, identifying risks, and improving security. Here are the four main steps NordStellar uses to protect your executives:
Choose who to monitor
Not all employees face the same level of risk. Executive protection focuses on high-value targets within the company, such as CEOs, CFOs, and board members. Your security team can identify individuals with the highest access privileges and monitor their digital footprint for potential threats.
Get alerts
Once monitoring is set up, your security team will receive real-time alerts when an executive’s credentials, sensitive data, or mentions appear on the dark web or hacker forums. These alerts help your company take immediate action before criminals exploit the exposed data.
Prioritize risks
A leaked email might be less urgent than stolen financial credentials or an active phishing campaign. Your security team can easily analyze the severity of each alert and focus on immediate threats.
Monitor exposure in real-time
Executive protection requires continuous monitoring of personal and corporate accounts, devices, and online presence. This ensures that new threats are detected as soon as they emerge, enabling your organization to respond in time.
Why choose NordStellar executive protection
Using NordStellar to protect executives and other high-ranking employees offers various benefits:
Protect sensitive data
Identify a number of threats targeting high-profile employees specifically and prevent unauthorized access.
Monitor company and personal accounts
NordStellar provides tailored protection for both personal and business accounts, ensuring that cybercriminals cannot exploit gaps in security.
Maintain business continuity
Minimize disruptions caused by compromised accounts to keep operations running smoothly.
Who needs executive protection?
Executive protection isn't just for executives. It’s for any high-profile individuals who may be targeted because of their access to sensitive information or financial assets, such as:
Corporate leadership
C-suite executives, board members, and key personnel
Financial stakeholders
Investors and high-net-worth individuals
Public figures
Celebrities, influencers, and their families
Explore NordStellar’s security solutions
NordStellar replicates the information gathering stage of a cyberattack, allowing you to know what your attackers might know. This way, your cybersecurity team is able to detect critical threats and intervene at the earliest stages of an attack — before any real damage is done.
Dark web monitoring allows you to track all keywords associated with your business across deep and dark web communities, such as hacker forums, illicit marketplaces, and Telegram channels. It helps you uncover brand mentions, issues with vendors, and leaked information about your VIP personnel.
Data breach monitoring involves scanning the deep and dark web for leaked sensitive information linked to your business. To spot breached data, NordStellar checks infostealer malware logs, leaked databases, and collections of stolen credentials combinations. This solution provides real-time monitoring and the full context of past and present attacks.
Attack surface management (ASM) helps you monitor your business's external attack surface to prevent potential cyber risks. It lets you efficiently manage your company's internet-facing assets, such as IP addresses with open ports and outdated technologies, by identifying vulnerabilities and security gaps within them.
Cybersquatting detection helps you recognize and prevent threat actors from impersonating your brand. Using content and visual similarity algorithms enriched with AI, NordStellar can detect various domain manipulations and issue real-time alerts, providing a detailed view of each suspicious domain.
FAQ
The three pillars of executive protection are physical security, privacy, and digital threats. For example, physical security doesn’t just include bodyguards and cameras. Even monitoring social media and data leaks can help identify threats that could lead to physical harm. On the other hand, privacy protection limits the exposure of personal and professional data, while protection against digital threats safeguards executives from cyberattacks.
Executive access to highly sensitive data often makes them targets for cybercriminals because a data breach or single successful attack can be extremely dangerous to the entire company. If an executive's account is compromised, cybercriminals can use it to steal company secrets, spread ransomware, access financial assets, and damage the reputation of the executive and the company.
Choosing the best executive protection solution means assessing your company’s specific security needs. Executive protection is an ongoing process, requiring a hands-on approach to continuously monitor and mitigate threats.
A good executive protection solution will ensure the process is as straightforward for your security team as possible. NordStellar offers years of cybersecurity expertise, modern solutions for proactive threat detection, and advanced digital protection for executives.
NordStellar’s alerts provide detailed information about the target and their exposed data, such as phone numbers and passwords. After receiving such an alert, you can easily recognize and secure compromised accounts, such as change passwords, adjust access privileges, or simply monitor for suspicious activity.