Family Office Cyber Security Testing

Why Family Offices Need Their Own Assessment

A standard enterprise penetration test scopes against an office IT environment. For a family office, that environment is typically the least interesting part of the attack surface. The real risk concentrates in places generic pen tests never touch: the principal's personal Wi-Fi at the primary and holiday residences, the household manager who routes wire instructions to the bank, the chief of staff's phone, the spouse's social media, the children's online presence, and the trust structures whose paper trail sits in a single shared mailbox.

Threat actors targeting UHNW individuals are not looking for ransomware ransoms in the low six figures. They are looking for a fraudulent wire transfer in the low eight figures, the credentials to a private banker's portal, kompromat for blackmail, or kidnap-and-ransom intelligence drawn from travel and location data leaked through household staff. The economics drive a different threat profile, and the assessment has to match.

What We Cover

How We Operate Discreetly

• NDA-first. No work begins, and no client is named publicly, ever. Engagements are referenced anonymously or not at all.
• Single point of contact. Typically the chief of staff or family office CISO/CIO. The principal is briefed in person where they wish to be.
• Sanitised reporting. Reports name systems and findings, not individuals or asset values. Where a person needs to be identified (e.g. a household staff member who fell for a phishing test) we use role titles and brief the principal in person separately.
• Minimal disruption. All testing windows agreed in advance and structured around the principal's schedule. We are routinely on site at residences over weekends and out of hours.
• Geographic flexibility. We operate across the UK, EU, UAE, Switzerland and the US. Engagement teams travel; nothing important is sent over consumer messaging.

Deliverables

• A confidential findings register with prioritised remediations and owners.
• A standalone personal-security playbook for the principal — covering device hygiene, travel posture, social media exposure, wire authorisation procedures and what to do if something goes wrong.
• A household-staff training brief, written to be readable by non-technical staff, focused on the realistic threats they face rather than generic awareness slides.
• A 90-day post-engagement support window for clarification, retest of remediations and incident triage if anything material occurs.

Related Services

• Social Engineering Assessment — standalone phishing and human-layer testing.
• Super Yacht Penetration Testing — for principals with vessel infrastructure.
• Wireless Security Assessment — residence and office Wi-Fi in detail.
• All Penetration Testing Services — the full CDSEC service catalogue.