The tragic killing of the United Healthcare CEO in late 2024 marked a critical inflection point for corporate security. Boards of directors moved quickly, asking urgent questions about the safety of their top executives. Many organizations responded decisively, deploying protective measures to safeguard their leadership in the office, at home and everywhere in between.
This rapid mobilization reflected the security risks faced by high-profile executives and the strategic importance of addressing them at the highest levels of governance. While many organizations are rightly focused on the current crisis in the Middle East, threats closer to home remain a concern for executives and employees alike. Increasingly, organizations that have worked hard to get executive protection “right” are asking a more strategic question: what comes next?
This is the first article in our five-part series, From executive protection to strategic preparedness. Across the series, we set out a practical roadmap for moving from reaction to resilience – starting with two questions that increasingly shape leadership discussions:
- What should organizations prioritize to protect executives and strengthen resilience over time?
- How can organizations progress from reactive protection to a sustainable, intelligence-led security program?
Answering these questions requires a shift toward proactive preparedness—an evolution that demands strategic foresight, cross-functional collaboration and a holistic approach to risk management.
(Re)establishing the Protective Foundation
In the months following the late-2024 incident, organizations initially focused on physical security, including:
- Evaluating threats to key executives
- Enhancing executive protection programs and protocols
- Deploying close protection personnel and upgrading office and residential security infrastructure
These measures were necessary, but largely reactive and designed to address immediate risks.
Moving beyond the initial response presents an opportunity to reassess the broader threat landscape—not only to executives, but also to employees, facilities, intellectual property and brand reputation. This requires re-establishing sustainable physical security capabilities that fit the organization’s risk exposure.
Core elements such as access control systems, enhanced visitor management, travel security protocols, intelligence collection and incident response planning should be evaluated and embedded into an organization’s security foundation. When implemented thoughtfully, these measures protect not just individuals, but the enterprise as a whole.
From Immediate Protection to Strategic Preparedness
While strengthening physical security is an essential starting point, it represents only the first phase of a much broader journey. The risks faced by executives are shaped by a complex interplay of physical, digital, psychological and organizational factors.
Addressing these risks in a sustainable way requires organizations to think beyond traditional executive protection models.
The challenge for leadership teams now is to move from reactive protection toward strategic preparedness – building security programs that are intelligence-led, integrated across functions and aligned with enterprise risk priorities.
In the next articles in the series, we’ll explore:
- Why executive protection can’t stop at physical security
- The insider threat gap in executive security and workplace violence prevention
- Why executive protection fails without crisis readiness
- From protection to preparedness: the strategic role of threat & protective intelligence