By Byron V. Acohido
Executives are under digital siege—and most don’t even know it.
Related: Shareholders sue over murder
At RSAC 2025, I sat down with Chuck Randolph, SVP of Strategic Intelligence and Security at 360 Privacy, to unpack a trend reshaping the threat landscape: the weaponization of personal data against corporate leaders and high-net-worth individuals. For a full drill down, please give the accompanying podcast a listen.
We’re not just talking about phishing or credential theft. Today’s adversaries are exploiting digital breadcrumbs. These include breached travel logs, exposed home records, and more.The goal is to surveil, profile, and target high-value individuals. What began as celebrity harassment and influencer swatting has become something more serious. It’s now a direct vector for disrupting enterprise resilience.
Randolph, a former military information operations officer, says this shift has been accelerating. Drivers include geopolitical instability, cybercrime-as-a-service, and the collapse of boundaries between online visibility and real-world vulnerability.
The high-profile murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO marked a chilling inflection point. It proved that digital exposure can escalate—beyond reputational harm—into targeted violence. Executive security programs now face a new era of asymmetric threats.
That’s the threat landscape 360 Privacy was built to address. The company blends PII removal, deep/dark web monitoring, and human-led threat analysis.
What sets the firm apart, he says, is its fusion of military-grade intelligence discipline with white-glove client service. Rather than relying on alerts, 360 Privacy emphasizes real-time intervention and discreet, proactive risk mitigation—a point Randolph emphasized.
The implications for organizations are far-reaching. An exposed executive can become a soft entry point for attackers, a flashpoint for brand damage, or even a material risk under evolving regulations like the SEC’s newly minted cybersecurity disclosure rules or the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).
As Randolph sees it, this is no longer just a personal privacy issue — it’s a resilience issue. And forward-looking companies are beginning to treat digital executive protection as a strategic necessity, on par with breach detection and identity governance. Makes sense. “I’ll keep watch — and keep reporting.”
Acohido
Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.
(LW provides consulting services to the vendors we cover.)