The killing of a UnitedHealthcare executive highlights the challenge companies face in protecting top brass

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NEW YORK (AP) – He is one of the most famous and respected corporate leaders in the world. But it’s the haters that companies like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta worry about.

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At a time when online anger and social tensions are increasingly directed at businesses that consumers rely on, Meta last year spent $24.4 million on security guards, alarms and other measures to keep Zuckerberg and the company’s chief operating officer safe.

Some high-profile CEOs surround themselves with security. But this week’s fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson while walking alone on a New York City street has shed light on the many ways companies are taking to protect their leaders from threats.

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Thompson had no personal security and appears to have been unaware of the gunman lurking before he was shot.

And today’s political, economic and technological climate will make the task of assessing threats against management and taking defensive action even more difficult, say experts.

“We are better today in collecting signs. “I’m not sure we’re any better at making sense of the signals we’re collecting,” said Fred Burton of Ontic, a provider of enterprise threat management software.

After Thompson was shot, Burton said, “I’ve been on the phone all day with some organizations asking for advice, saying, ‘Am I doing enough?’

Some of the largest US companies, especially those in the technology sector, spend a lot of money on personal security and housing for their top executives.

Meta, whose businesses include Facebook and Instagram, reported the highest spending on personal security among senior executives last year, data released by research firm Equilar show.

Zuckerberg “is like Meta and, as a result, negative feelings about our company are directly related, and often transferred to Mr. Zuckerberg,” the company of Menlo Park, California, explained earlier this year in the disclosure of shareholders in the year.

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At Apple, the world’s largest technology company by stock valuation, CEO Tim Cook was harassed by an attacker who sent him sexually suggestive emails and even showed up outside his home in Silicon Valley at one point before the company’s security team successfully took legal action against him. 2022.

Cook is always accompanied by security when he appears in public. Still, the $820,000 the company allocated last year to protect top executives is a fraction of what other tech giants spent on CEO security.

More than a quarter of Fortune 500 companies reported that they use cash to protect their executives and other senior executives. For those who did, the average personal safety net premium doubled over the past three years to nearly $98,000.

For many companies, investor meetings like the one UnitedHealthcare’s Thompson was attending when he was shot are considered high risk because details of where and who will speak are widely publicized.

“It gives people the opportunity to arrive early and look at the room, to see how people will leave the area,” said Dave Komendat, president of DSKomendat Risk Management Services, based. in the greater Seattle area.

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Some firms responded by tightening security. For example, technology companies often require everyone attending a major event, such as Apple’s annual unveiling of the next iPhone or a shareholder meeting, to go through airport-style security checkpoints before entering.

Others are abandoning their in-person meetings with shareholders, including Amazon, which holds its annual shareholder meetings at approx.

“But there are corporate cultures that don’t like that and want their leaders to be accessible to the people, to be accessible to shareholders, employees,” said Komendat.

Depending on the company, such an approach may make sense. Many senior officials are little known to the public, working in industries and places that make them less exposed to the public and threats.

“Determining the need and appropriate level of a high-quality security program is unique to each organization,” said David Johnston, vice president of asset protection and retail operations at the National Retail Federation. “These defense mechanisms must also include continuous monitoring of potential threats and the ability to adapt to changes in order to maintain an appropriate level of safety and security.”

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Some organizations have a security intelligence group that uses digital tools such as machine learning or artificial intelligence to compile online comments to detect threats not only on social networks like X but also on the dark web, Komendat said. They look at what is being said about the company, its employees and its leadership to uncover risks.

“There are always threats against top leaders in companies. Many of them are not honest,” said Komendat. “The question is always trying to figure out what is the real threat versus who is just talking with no intention of taking further action.”

Burton, a former special agent with the US Diplomatic Security Service, points out that despite the current climate, there is very little in the way of organized groups targeting companies.

Today, one of the main concerns is that loners talking on the Internet are being fed by like-minded others. It is up to corporate security analysts to wade into such a conversation and decide whether it represents a real threat or not.

And CEOs aren’t the only drivers of disgruntled customers. In the US, 525 people died at work due to attacks in 2022, according to the National Safety Council. Industries including health, education and service providers are the most violent, with taxi drivers 20 times more likely to be killed on the job than other workers, the group said.

But Thompson’s ambush of UnitedHealthcare this week will have some top executives second-guessing themselves.

“What always happens in times like this over time is you’re going to get more ears” from security experts looking for money to beef up the administration’s defenses, Burton said.

“Because I can assure you that there is no senior manager in America who does not know this incident.”

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Associated Press writers Anne D’Innocenzio and Halleluya Hadero in New York contributed.

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