{"id":332,"date":"2026-08-17T13:19:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T12:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cardonet.co.uk\/insights\/?p=332"},"modified":"2026-08-17T13:19:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T12:19:34","slug":"family-office-cybersecurity-small-teams-institutional-grade-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cardonet.co.uk\/insights\/family-office-cybersecurity-small-teams-institutional-grade-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"Private Family Offices: small teams, big targets \u2014 how to get institutional-grade cyber and privacy protection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Private family offices may look like small businesses on paper. In reality, many carry the exposure of a regulated institution: concentrated wealth, sensitive personal data, direct access to decision-makers, and operational dependence on a very small team.\u00a0Deloitte’s 2024 Family Office Cybersecurity Report<\/a>\u00a0found that 43% of family offices globally had experienced a cyberattack in the previous 12 to 24 months, and 25% had experienced three or more attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picture a London-based private family office on a normal weekday. The principals are flying from Singapore to New York. The PA is in Mayfair clearing email, arranging catering, booking a last-minute stop in Dubai, and forwarding investment papers to a lawyer in Geneva. Somewhere between the airport lounge and the office, a phishing email slips through. The PA’s email account is taken over, and the attacker starts to study the inbox. Within minutes, they can see travel plans, draft payment instructions, advisor details, and the office’s approval patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attacker does not need to breach a bank. They only need one believable payment request, one fake document share, or one well-timed message to an under-pressure advisor. From there, privacy, money, and reputation can all go at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is why\u00a0single and multi-family private offices for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families have become prime cyber and privacy targets<\/a>. The combination is hard to ignore: concentrated wealth, sensitive personal data, lean staffing, cross-border coordination, and lots of out-of-hours decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Privacy, cybersecurity, and uptime are not the same thing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A modern private office is rarely one office in one city. It follows the family across London, Zurich, Geneva, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, and other wealth hubs. It moves across time zones, relies on external advisers, and handles decisions that often will not wait until morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Privacy, cybersecurity, and uptime sit together, but they are not the same problem. Privacy is about who can see what. Cybersecurity is about stopping unauthorised access and spotting it quickly. Uptime is about whether the office can still function when email, file access, connectivity, home technology, or a core platform fails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a private office, these three risks are tied together. A PA booking complex travel needs access to private data, secure logins across multiple systems, and reliable connectivity while people are moving between countries. A Head of Office approving an urgent transfer late at night needs strong identity checks, clear confidentiality boundaries, and systems that do not fall over at the worst moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If all of that is treated as ordinary “IT”, the real issue is missed. A PA arranging travel, a finance lead approving a transfer, and a principal working from a residence all need privacy boundaries, secure access, and reliable systems at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why family offices are being hit harder<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Attackers have worked out that\u00a0family offices can hold the sort of information and access that used to sit behind larger institutional walls<\/a>. They can hold detailed asset data, personal records, legal correspondence, travel patterns, property information, trust structures, and direct lines to decision-makers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also tend to run lean. Deloitte found that while 85% of family offices report using strong passwords or multi-factor authentication and 72% report using data backups, only 58% provide cybersecurity staff training, 34% conduct maturity assessments, 50% do not have a disaster recovery plan, and 68% have not adopted know-your-vendor protocols. Those gaps are especially dangerous in a private-office setting because attackers can exploit informal process, trusted relationships, and urgent decision-making at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phishing remains one of the biggest entry points. WealthBriefing reported that\u00a0phishing and malware are the most common forms of attack in family offices<\/a>, and that 93% of family offices that had been attacked said those incidents involved phishing emails. In this setting, phishing is shaped around hierarchy, urgency, travel, and trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most common external threats are familiar, but the family-office context makes them especially dangerous:<\/p>\n\n\n\n