Home Insights Technology & Science 6 Steps UHNW Individuals Can Take to Protect Themselves Against Cyberthreats

6 Steps UHNW Individuals Can Take to Protect Themselves Against Cyberthreats

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TIGER 21

Published On

November 2, 2026

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Technology & Science

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Guest Blog by James Salmon, TIGER 21 CIO

Wealthy individuals and families are a priority target for cyberattacks. Attackers and scammers usually go after personal accounts, focusing on the people in and around the trusted circle: spouses, children, assistants, and family office staff.

As TIGER 21 CIO, I spend a good part of my week thinking on these risks, and I’ve seen them reach many ultra-wealthy individuals. In this article, I’ll offer some background on how cyberthreats are changing, as well as some simple, practical steps you can take to start reducing exposure.

Why Protecting Yourself and Your Family Matters More Than Ever

AI is changing cybersecurity.

The same tools helping defenders find flaws faster are helping attackers exploit them faster. The gap between a flaw becoming public and being attacked has shrunk from weeks to hours. Additionally, AI is providing cybercriminals with an increasingly sophisticated toolkit they can use to carry out their attacks.

The first step to reducing your risk is staying aware of the most likely inroads a cybercriminal might use against you or your family.

Four Common Approaches Cybercriminals Use

Most personal cyberattacks rely on a handful of familiar approaches.

Taking over a personal inbox. Once inside, an attacker reads quietly for weeks, learns who you pay and how, and then steps into a real conversation with your lawyer, an advisor, or a supplier to redirect a payment. Because the scammer can access genuine emails, the fake invoice or request to change to “new bank details” they generate looks right. We have seen this happen to Members within our community. It is a real risk.
Impersonating people and organizations you trust. Messages might appear to come from your bank, your club, a peer group, or a colleague, often from a look-alike address that differs by one character.
AI-written messages and cloned voices. The spelling mistakes that used to give phishing away are gone. A few seconds of audio from a podcast, panel, or social media video is enough to clone a voice for an “urgent” phone call.
Your public footprint. Press coverage, speaking bios, LinkedIn, philanthropy, and family social media all help an attacker write a convincing, personal approach. Assistants, family office staff, and family members are often targeted as the easier way in.

A few basic habits can stop many of these common scams. I’ll walk through those in the next section.

Six Steps to Take Today to Prevent Cyberattacks and Patch Vulnerabilities

Of course, there’s tremendous value in consulting with a cybersecurity expert for a comprehensive evaluation. However, these initial six steps are a good start to immediately shore up any potential weak spots.

1. Update everything regularly. Install pending updates on your laptop, phone, and tablet, including apps, then restart. Avoid delaying these updates, as they often contain crucial patches to eliminate vulnerabilities that hackers have uncovered.

Do the same for your home Wi-Fi router, which many people overlook. Expect this to take about 15 minutes.

2. Be extremely careful on networks you don’t control. WiFi networks at hotels, airports, cafés, and conferences represent real risk. Avoid using them wherever possible. Ideally, use your phone’s personal hotspot instead. If you must use an outside network, only use it with a trusted VPN that shows as connected.

3. Verify every payment request by phone. For any invoice, change of bank details, or urgent wire request: Call the person on a number you already have, never the one in the email. This one habit can stop the most common and costly form of payment fraud.

4. Lock down your personal email. It is the key to your bank, your brokerage, and everything else. Turn on two-step verification. Using an authenticator app or passkey is more secure than verification via SMS. Additionally, use a password you use nowhere else, and take a moment right now to review which devices and apps have access.

5. Expect convincing fakes. AI can clone a voice from a short video clip. It can also write an email in your colleague’s exact style. Agree on a code word with family, assistants, and key staff for any urgent request involving money.

6. Ask three questions if you run a business or sit on a board: 1) Do we have a consistent process for completing regular updates to our software and hardware? 2) Which outside apps have administrator access to our email and files, and when did we last review them? 3) How quickly can we patch a critical flaw? If the answer is days rather than hours, that’s worth a further conversation.

Putting These Steps into Practice

Most of these steps take minutes. Updating your devices, turning on two-step verification, and agreeing on a code word with your family can all happen relatively quickly. Together, they close the gaps attackers rely on most.

The harder part is making them habits for everyone around you. Share this list with your family, your assistants, and your family office staff, since they are often the first people an attacker contacts. A short conversation about what a suspicious request looks like—and who to call to check it—can prevent a number of attacks from moving forward.

For a fuller picture of where you’re exposed, a cybersecurity specialist can review your devices, accounts, and public footprint, and offer you a comprehensive plan.

In the meantime, none of these steps I shared above requires in-depth technical expertise. My hope is that they give you a fresh perspective on how to keep yourself and your family safe and, that with a few hours of attention, you and the people around you become a much harder target.

About James Salmon

Chief Information Officer James Salmon leads technology at TIGER 21, where trust, discretion, and Member experience matter as much as systems and process. His career has taken him from electronics engineering in the Royal Australian Air Force to CIO and CTO roles across government, healthcare, higher education, homebuilding, and financial services, working in Australia, the UK, the US, South Africa, Germany, and Chile. Connect with James on LinkedIn.