Page 14 - FOGlet 4

Why Family

Offices are

attractive targets

for cyber crime

By Robert Hannigan

nyone who studies the activities of rigorously update their systems and will
organised cybercrime groups often give all employees access to all
cannot fail to be impressed by aspects of the network, another open goal
Atheir creativity, innovation and in cyber security terms.
adaptability. Cyber criminals are applying The intimacy and informality of a family
to online fraud the kind of resources and office make it hard to instil good security
effort once associated with the narcotics discipline. Even if cyber security awareness
trade, which is yielding hundreds of is high, family offices are particularly
millions in revenue every year. vulnerable to attacks delivered through
This has inevitably led to a growing unwitting third party vendors. Law firms
criminal interest in family offices and high and small investment houses, property
net worth individuals. Family offices are a companies or the myriad of suppliers used
perfect target: they control significant every day may be the weak link through
wealth but have few of the cyber security which access can be gained. And like all
defences associated with large companies. organisations, families and high net worth
They present rich pickings for fraud, theft, individuals will be concerned about
and for capitalising on privacy concerns insiders, perhaps not in their own offices
and reputational damage. Criminals are but among their suppliers. We regularly see
good at monetising data in a wide variety disgruntled staff or, more often, those
of forms. They take their research seriously bribed by criminal groups, facilitating
and can discover a huge amount of detail attacks by others or stealing data
freely available on the internet about the themselves.
wealthy, their families and their Quantifying the losses from this new
connections. Armed with this they can trend is difficult: few families or individuals
begin to work out easier ways to penetrate will discuss publicly their financial or data
a victim’s network. loss and may not want to involve law
While family offices may control large enforcement in order to preserve their
amounts of money associated with major privacy. But in the security industry we
enterprises, they themselves are more likely have seen a significant rise in successful
to resemble small businesses. They may attacks on family offices and high net worth
have relatively few staff and no in-house IT individuals.
or security function; they will not be In one case, a criminal group guessed
spending millions on the cyber defences of the email password of a senior family
a major bank. They are less likely to member and spent some weeks reading the

12 www.gpfo.co.uk Foglet 4th Edition