In brief: Family offices are high-value, low-security targets for cyberattacks. Deepfakes, phishing, and social engineering exploit the trust-based approval processes that most offices rely on. This article outlines the practical cybersecurity measures every family office should implement now.
I want you to imagine something. Your EA gets an email from you asking for an urgent wire transfer. The email looks right. The writing style sounds right. There's even a voice note attached that sounds exactly like you, explaining it's urgent, asking them to move quickly and not worry about the usual sign-off process.
Except it isn't you. It's a deepfake. And the money is gone before anyone realises what happened.
This isn't science fiction. This is the specific, documented threat that 83% of family offices say they're now worried about, according to recent industry data. And it's one of several reasons why, when it comes to cybersecurity, family offices are in a genuinely precarious position.
The Numbers Are Not Pretty
Let's start with the headline: 57% of family offices in North America experienced a cyberattack in the last one to two years. Not "nearly experienced." Not "a suspicious email." An actual attack. For offices managing over a billion in AUM, that figure climbs to 62%.
These aren't random targets. Family offices are deliberately targeted because they combine three things attackers love: significant assets, lean teams, and historically weak defences. You've got the wealth of a mid-sized bank with the IT infrastructure of a small professional services firm.
Ninety-three percent of attacks come through phishing. That's someone clicking something they shouldn't, usually because it looked convincing enough, or because they were busy and moving fast. And with AI now being used to craft hyper-personalised phishing emails that reference real names, real relationships, and real context pulled from public sources, the old "just don't click suspicious links" advice is wearing a bit thin.
The Response Plan Problem
Here's where it gets genuinely alarming. Thirty-one percent of family offices have no cyber incident response plan whatsoever. None. Zip. If something goes wrong, their plan is essentially "panic and call someone." And only 26% have actually tested the plan they do have.
Think about that for a second. Imagine a restaurant with a kitchen full of gas hobs and deep fat fryers that's never done a fire drill, has no fire extinguishers, and whose emergency exit plan is a Post-it note on the fridge that nobody's read. You'd be horrified. But that's precisely the cybersecurity posture of a significant chunk of the family office industry.
Sixty-three percent lack cybersecurity insurance. The average cost of a data breach in 2024 was $4.9 million. And yet.
Only 8% of family offices use external providers to manage their cybersecurity. Eight percent. Everyone else is either doing it internally, which usually means someone in IT has it as one of about forty responsibilities, or not really doing it at all.
Legacy Systems Make It Worse
Sixty-seven percent of family offices cite legacy systems as a major obstacle to breach recovery. This is the unlocked back door problem. You can have the world's most sophisticated front door security, but if your operational systems are running on software that hasn't been patched since 2018, you're leaving a window open at the back.
Old systems don't get security updates. They have known vulnerabilities that are publicly documented in databases that hackers actively use. They often can't be properly integrated with modern security tools. And because they're deeply embedded in operations, nobody wants to touch them in case something breaks.
Only 60% of family office staff feel confident they could detect an AI-powered attack, compared to 69% across other financial services. That gap in confidence is real, and it reflects a genuine training and awareness deficit.
Where AI Helps, and Where It Doesn't
Here's the nuance that most cybersecurity conversations miss: AI is both a threat and a tool, and you need to understand both sides.
On the threat side, AI makes phishing more convincing, deepfakes more accessible, and social engineering attacks easier to scale. The attackers are using AI too, and they're getting better at it fast.
On the defence side, AI-powered security tools can monitor network behaviour in real time and flag anomalies that a human analyst would never catch. They can scan emails for phishing indicators. They can automate patch management. They can detect unusual access patterns before they become breaches. The same technology that makes attacks more sophisticated can make your defences smarter, but only if you actually deploy it.
The Fix
Start with the basics that most offices are still missing. Get an incident response plan written down and actually test it at least twice a year. Sort out cybersecurity insurance. Audit your legacy systems and prioritise the ones with the biggest exposure. Train your team on AI-powered social engineering, specifically on wire transfer fraud and impersonation attacks.
Then think seriously about whether your internal IT capacity is genuinely sufficient for the threat environment you're operating in. For most offices, the honest answer is no, and bringing in external expertise is not an admission of failure. It's just sensible.
The Takeaway
A $4.9 million breach. A deepfake of your voice. An operations team with no plan for what to do if the worst happens. This is the reality for too many family offices right now.
You insure your buildings, your vehicles, your art collection. Treat your digital infrastructure with the same seriousness. Because the attackers certainly do.
