Private, But Not Protected: The New Cyber and Privacy Risks Facing Successful Families

It started with 15 seconds of concert footage.

At a Coldplay show in Boston, the camera panned across the crowd and settled on two figures: Andy Byron, CEO of data platform Astronomer, and his colleague, Kristin Cabot, the firm’s Head of HR. A moment of intimacy between the pair — captured by chance on the venue’s kiss cam — was met with a knowing remark from Chris Martin himself:

“Either they’re having an affair… or they’re very shy.”

The clip was shared to TikTok. And within 24 hours:

• Byron resigned as CEO, amid speculation and scrutiny.
• Cabot’s reputation was severely damaged, her role now under investigation.
• Their families — spouses, children, extended networks — were thrust into the spotlight, enduring headlines, Reddit threads, and anonymous commentary.

Neither had broken the law. But in a world powered by viral moments and digital crowds, legality is no shield against reputational ruin. Their personal and professional lives were upended almost overnight.

Now imagine, for a moment, that they were members of a well-known family. Perhaps beneficiaries of a legacy enterprise. Or public-facing directors of a family office or charitable trust. The impact wouldn’t stop at the individual. It would ripple through generations, boardrooms, and brand equity.

This is the new reality for wealthy families: privacy isn’t just harder to maintain — it’s actively under threat. And cyber risk? It no longer lives in spreadsheets or firewalls. It lives in our behaviour, our networks, our visibility, and our assumptions.

The Collapse of the Private Sphere

Two decades ago, moments like the Astronomer incident would have passed unseen. A handshake. A glance. A conversation in the wrong corner of a room — forgotten as quickly as it occurred.

But today, everyone carries a broadcast studio in their pocket. And every moment, no matter how fleeting or nuanced, can be captured, shared, and interpreted for a global audience.

The consequences are no longer theoretical. They are lived:

• Careers ended overnight
• Spouses forced offline
• Children dragged into gossip and judgment

This isn’t just reputational risk — it’s identity erosion in real time. And for prominent families, the stakes are higher still.

When Social Sharing Becomes a Security Threat

Reputation is one form of exposure. But it isn’t the only one.

In July, Australian billionaire Laurence Escalante was holidaying in Europe. His Instagram showed him relaxed aboard a Mykonos superyacht, wearing a Richard Mille watch reportedly worth over $1 million. The next night, his villa was robbed — jewellery, watches, designer goods stolen in minutes.

The robbery didn’t happen by coincidence. It was facilitated by data: timestamps, location tags, visibility. And while Escalante wasn’t harmed, the incident underscores a darker possibility:

What if his family had been home? What if it had escalated into a confrontation or hostage event?

In a hyper-connected world, oversharing is operational risk. Not just to wealth, but to life and limb.

The Expanding Digital Attack Surface

High-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) families now face cyber threats that are more targeted, more sophisticated, and more invasive than ever before.

Key stats:

• 43% of global family offices experienced a cyberattack in the past 24 months.
• 25% were attacked three or more times.
• The average data breach cost in 2024 was USD $4.88 million.
• Wealthy individuals are 43% more likely to suffer identity theft than the general population.

And critically: these figures understate the true cost. Many incidents go unreported. The rest are quietly resolved — after reputational damage has already taken hold.

Why Families Are Prime Targets

Three converging forces are driving this risk:

1. Sophisticated Reconnaissance

Criminals no longer guess. They use data broker lists, property records, philanthropic activity, political donations, and social media breadcrumbs to identify and profile families. AI models now help criminals simulate language, mimic tone, and craft convincing phishing attacks impersonating family members or advisers.

2. The Human Perimeter

Cyberattacks don’t start with servers. They start with people: spouses, children, assistants. The weakest link is rarely the wealth holder — it’s someone in their network, unknowingly offering a digital backdoor.

3. Technology Integration and Data Drift

Families increasingly use third-party platforms — often with data stored offshore, beyond Australian privacy protections. A cloud-based estate planning tool. A family’s investment dashboard. An AI summariser trained on legal documents. Each one opens a vector for exposure, often without the family’s knowledge or consent.

Reputation: The Biggest Unmanaged Risk

In many family offices, investment strategy is meticulously managed. Estate planning is sophisticated. Tax is optimised.

But reputation? Often it’s an afterthought — until it’s too late.

This blind spot becomes glaring when:

• A family member goes viral, for reasons they never intended.
• Media coverage connects an isolated incident to the entire family brand.
• Young heirs are scrutinised on TikTok or Reddit for their lifestyle or commentary.

In today’s world, families don’t just need PR firms — they need proactive digital governance. Because once a story takes hold online, no amount of truth-telling can undo the first impression.

The Five Dimensions of Privacy

Privacy is not a one-dimensional concept. For successful families, it spans five key areas — each with its own form of exposure, and each requiring a distinct strategic response.

First, there’s physical privacy. This includes your homes, travel routines, and daily movements. When these details are too accessible — whether through property records, social media posts, or online bookings — they can be exploited. The solution lies in securing addresses, managing who knows your movements, limiting location-sharing, and removing family members from public databases or search engine visibility wherever possible.

Second, financial privacy. This involves the visibility of your investment structures, asset holdings, and liabilities. Publicly accessible information, or poor entity structuring, can make it easier for cybercriminals — or even competitors — to map your wealth. The antidote is robust legal structuring, limiting digital trails, and avoiding public displays of wealth that might trigger targeting.

Third, digital privacy. Think devices, apps, cloud services, and third-party platforms. Every login, every integration, and every cloud-based storage solution introduces a point of risk. Families should enforce strong digital hygiene: multi-factor authentication, end-to-end encrypted communication tools, and regular audits of which software tools store sensitive data — especially those hosted outside Australian data protection jurisdictions.

Fourth, social privacy. This is often the most underestimated. It encompasses personal relationships, lifestyle choices, affiliations, and the digital behaviours of younger family members. A friend’s tagged photo, a birthday post, or a viral moment can provide more insight into your family than a financial statement ever could. The most resilient families build a culture of digital awareness: they educate children and staff, limit tagging and geotagging, and avoid real-time broadcasting of movements or events.

Finally, commercial privacy. This relates to the operating companies you own, directorships you hold, and the public presence of the family enterprise. Even well-intentioned publicity can backfire if it links your personal identity too closely with a commercial entity — particularly during litigation, crisis, or takeover activity. Strategic families often maintain separation between family names and business brands, use corporate entities for visibility, and avoid concentrating reputational exposure in a single individual.

In each of these five dimensions, the goal isn’t secrecy for its own sake. It’s control. Control over your data, your visibility, and the way your family’s story is accessed and told.

Case Studies: When Privacy Fails

1. Nordic Family Hotel Group

An employee opened an email from a “partner” requesting a spreadsheet download. It contained ransomware. The result?

• Entire hotel systems shut down
• Guests locked out of rooms
• Elevators and bookings frozen
• $5 million ransom demand

The family’s name — well-regarded for decades — was suddenly associated with cyber negligence.

2. Ruby Franke, Family Vlogger

What began as innocent family vlogging devolved into criminality. Franke was convicted of child abuse. Her children testified to the dangers of monetised online exposure. The lesson? Privacy can’t be an afterthought when visibility becomes an income stream.

The Tech Solutions That Work

For proactive families and family offices, technology is no longer just a tool — it’s a defensive moat.

Effective strategies include:

• Data aggregation platforms (e.g. Addepar) to centralise financial visibility and reduce manual risk.
• Secure document management (e.g. Canoe Intelligence) for alternative investments using AI-enhanced automation.
• Encrypted communication tools (e.g. Signal, ProtonMail) for tax, legal, and estate matters.
• Access control systems limiting who can see what — and when.

Case in point: a London-based family office digitised their systems, cutting report generation time from days to minutes and doubling operational capacity without adding headcount. Most importantly, they eliminated blind spots in their data trail.

Cybersecurity as a Return-On-Investment

Too often, cybersecurity is framed as a sunk cost. But the financial reality tells a different story.

According to IBM:

• Firms with incident response plans save USD $1.49 million per breach.
• Organisations using AI-driven security save another USD $2.22 million on average.
• Properly implemented programs can return over 1000% ROI based on losses prevented.

Cyber investment, in other words, isn’t a cost — it’s a form of wealth preservation.

A Strategic Roadmap for Families

Cybersecurity and privacy protection aren’t one-time projects – they require a phased and deliberate approach, much like building a robust investment strategy or estate plan.

In the immediate term – within the first 90 days – families should focus on implementing foundational protections. This includes activating multi-factor authentication across all systems, deploying secure password managers, and conducting audits of staff and third-party access to sensitive information. These are the non-negotiables – the digital equivalent of locking the front door.

Over the medium term – across the next 3 to 12 months – the focus shifts to system modernisation and education. Families should consider overhauling outdated platforms, upgrading data security infrastructure, and ensuring that both staff and family members (including younger generations) receive targeted cybersecurity awareness training. This is also the time to formalise a breach response plan, so roles and actions are clear in the event of a crisis.

In the long term – over a one to three-year horizon – strategic families should embed privacy into their governance frameworks. This includes establishing policies for real-time monitoring of digital threats, reviewing the digital footprint of family members and entities, and creating protocols for managing digital legacy – what information persists, how it’s accessed, and by whom, even after key individuals step back or pass on.

Each phase builds on the last. And collectively, they form the foundation of a privacy-first approach to enduring family stewardship.

Final Reflection: Privacy is the New Prestige

For generations, families protected their wealth through legal structuring, strategic investing, and measured succession planning.

Today, that’s no longer enough.

We live in a world where a 15-second video can upend a CEO’s life. Where an Instagram story can invite home invasion. Where AI-enabled tools can scrape your family’s digital footprint faster than you can delete it.

But we also live in a world where the right governance, technology, and culture can preserve privacy — not just as a value, but as a competitive advantage.

The most successful families of the next generation won’t be the loudest or the flashiest. They’ll be the ones who understand that privacy is not about retreating — it’s about control.

Control over reputation. Control over data. Control over legacy.

In short, they will be the families who see cybersecurity not as a technical add-on — but as a core component of enduring family stewardship.

Ryan Loehr is a private wealth adviser to Australia’s most successful families. He writes about investment strategy, family governance, and the human side of wealth.