How Narrative Attacks On Social Media Impact Executive Protection

Due to an expanding and democratized communications landscape, executive protection is more complex than ever. A few key takeaways:

• Narrative attacks on social media attacks pose a growing threat to executive protection and corporate security.
• 43% of executives use social media daily, making them an attractive target. 
• Bad actors across the political and ideological spectrum launch narrative attacks on social media with various motivations. 
• Common attack types include deepfake profiles and content, reconnaissance, and narrative attacks. 
• Narrative attacks cause serious reputational, financial, and potentially physical harm to individuals, organizations, and property. 
• To mitigate risk, teams must closely monitor the communications landscape, implement stringent social media policies, evaluate executive security measures, and have a crisis communications plan.
• Successful executive protection begins with protection against narrative attacks on social media before they go viral. Partnering with a narrative intelligence expert is the best way to accomplish this.

Narrative attacks on social media targeting executives are increasing. Platforms provide excellent opportunities for leaders to connect with stakeholders and customers while building personal brands but also present significant risks. From harmful narratives to executive targeting, these threats can impact executive protection and lead to reputational damage, financial losses, and physical danger.

This blog post explores the risks associated with narrative attacks on social media and how narrative intelligence strengthens executive protection strategies in today’s digital-first world.

Understanding Social Media Risks in Executive Protection

In an era of widespread corporate distrust and heightened online activity, organizational leaders face increasing scrutiny. With 43% of executives using social media daily to build their brands and engage with their customers—including over half of Fortune 100 CEOs—the potential for executive targeting through social media is at an all-time high.

While building a personal brand is crucial, an online presence invites risks and threats. Hackers, adversarial activists, and other bad actors exploit the expanding digital surface.

However, organizations can mitigate these risks with a proactive and comprehensive approach.

The Rise of Narrative Attacks on Social Media Against Executives

Why Are Executives Targeted?

Executives symbolize corporate power, innovation, and wealth, making them prime targets for attackers fueled by dissatisfaction with economic disparities, social change, and corporate influence. Online platforms become a battleground where grievances can quickly transform into harmful campaigns and effective executive targeting, impacting executive protection and corporate security.

Alarming Trends:

• From CEO Today: “An Ipsos survey…found that over two-thirds of Americans believe the economy is skewed to benefit the wealthy and powerful. Similarly, a 2022 Pew Research Center study revealed that only 25% of adults think large businesses positively impact the country…According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 10% of U.S. families control approximately 60% of the nation’s wealth, leaving many feeling disempowered and disenfranchised.”
• According to Spiceworks, executive impersonations have increased 26% over the past year, while executive-targeted scams, fraud, and piracy have climbed 29% over the same period.

These executive targeting trends and threats underscore the need for robust measures to protect high-profile leaders.

Who’s Behind Executive-Targeting Narrative Attacks?

Executive targeting on social media stems from various actors, including:

• Hackers: Motivated by financial gain.
• Activists: Targeting executives based on political, environmental, or social issues.
• Hacktivists: Leverage technology to make a political or social statement and sow discord.

Attackers often exploit trigger events—e.g., mergers, controversial statements, financial market shifts, elections, natural disasters, or geopolitical crises—to spread harmful narratives. They will leverage AI-based tools to artificially amplify the narrative, including bots, coordinated networks, and deepfake content, making executive protection increasingly complex.

Types of Narrative Attacks on Social Media

Attack types have a marked impact on executive security and corporate security and can include:

• Deepfake Profiles: Impersonating legitimate users for nefarious activities, including spreading harmful narratives and deceiving users into divulging personal information, clicking on malicious links, impacting stock price or engaging in fraud.
• Reconnaissance: Attackers use an executive’s social media activity to extract personal details, such as locations and routines. This data is used for executive targeting and cause reputational, financial, and physical harm.
• Sophisticated Campaigns using Narrative Attacks: A narrative attack is any assertion that shapes perception about a person, place, or thing in the information ecosystem. As the World Economic Forum identified, narrative attacks are a top global risk in 2024 due to their potential to disrupt business operations and erode trust.

Real-World Scenario: How Narrative Attacks on Social Media Escalate

An executive of a renewable energy company, known for their criticism and aggressive lobbying efforts against fossil fuel interests, posts critical comments about a political figure accepting donations from the industry. This results in a contentious online exchange and triggers a cascade of executive-targeting events:

1. Deepfake Video: A fabricated video emerges, portraying the executive as making offensive remarks about environmental activists and their causes.  
2. Narrative Attack: The video is amplified by artificial means (bots and coordinated networks), fueling negative sentiment.
3. Reconnaissance: The executive’s family and staff overshare on social media, revealing their daily routines and locations during high-profile events.
4. Escalation: Threats, doxing, and physical protests disrupt the executive’s home and business operations and damage company facilities.

Impact:

• Security Issues: The attacks weaken executive protection efforts, resulting in significant costs for enhanced executive and corporate security measures, particularly facility security. 
• Reputational Damage: The executive’s tarnished public image impacts the company’s reputation. Consumers associate the company with controversy and ethical concerns, leading to declining product and service demand.
• Financial Damage: Concerned about the negative publicity and perception of the executive, key investors, strategic partners, and clients withdraw support, jeopardizing the company’s revenue streams and future growth. Additionally, the company must contend with facility repairs and lost productivity costs.

The following steps could have prevented the social media attacks and adverse outcomes to the organization’s executive protection and corporate security efforts:

1. Monitoring for Narrative Attacks: By monitoring the risk landscape, teams better understand the narratives around executives and their companies, enabling better planning for executive protection, corporate security measures, and crisis protocols.

2. Implementing Strong Social Media Policies:  Social media policies and protocols can help protect against executive targeting. Guidelines that include delayed posting and approval of executive-related updates by a communications officer can help further enhance executive protection measures.

3. Partnering with a Narrative Intelligence Expert: These specialized experts evaluate the entire risk landscape and identify and neutralize emerging threats before they go viral, providing critical insights to bolster executive protection strategies.

4. Enhancing Corporate Security: Online threats aren’t always obvious, but they can impact other areas of executive risk. Physical security teams, secure travel protocols, and home and office surveillance systems are sound investments in a robust executive protection program.

Narrative Intelligence and Executive Security

The need for narrative intelligence as part of a thorough executive security program is growing. Gartner predicts that the narrative intelligence market will exceed $30 billion globally by 2028. Narrative intelligence goes beyond standard social listening to enable organizations, regardless of industry, to detect harmful narratives and other social media attacks more effectively and efficiently before they go viral. 

Think of narrative intelligence partners as sophisticated online surveillance and investigation experts. These experts fortify executive protection and corporate security efforts by identifying key narratives that impact your organization/industry and the influence behind them. Narrative intelligence teams can also map the networks harmful narratives touch, the anomalous behavior that scales them, and the cohorts and communities that connect them. These proactive steps enable organizations to understand narrative threats as they scale and before they become harmful. This early knowledge is critical to strategic decision-making and executing a successful response. The most effective narrative intelligence measures require examining the entire threat landscape, from social media platforms to community chat rooms to news sites and even the Darkweb – to give you a comprehensive view of your executive and company risk profile. 

Building an Effective Executive Protection Strategy

Executives protection in the digital age requires a multi-layered approach:

• Take the Threat Seriously: Narrative attacks on social media can cause significant harm. Not acting on the threat quickly puts executive and corporate security at risk. 
• Monitor the Narrative: Fighting these attacks requires going beyond traditional threat intelligence and social listening tools by focusing on early detection of coordinated narrative attacks.
• Establish Clear Social Media Guidelines: Modern executive protection strategies require training leaders and staff on best practices for safe online activity.
• Respond Swiftly: Early action is key to preventing narrative attacks from spiraling out of control and impacting executive protection efforts.
• Be Proactive: Regularly assess risks and update online and physical executive security plans.
• Partner with a Narrative Intelligence Expert: These experts detect and combat harmful narratives before they go viral. Partners will have technology and specialists to monitor the entire threat landscape, find the who, why, and how behind narrative attacks, and assist in better, more strategic responses and decision-making. 

Organizations can strengthen executive protection and corporate security by implementing these strategies while maintaining public and consumer trust.

Take control of your executive protection strategy today—schedule an executive threat and risk assessment now.

About Blackbird.AIBLACKBIRD.AI protects organizations from narrative attacks that cause financial, reputational, and physical harm. Our AI-driven Narrative Intelligence Platform identifies key narratives that impact your executives/organization/industry, the influence behind them, the networks they touch, the anomalous behavior that scales them, and the cohorts and communities that connect them. This information enables organizations to proactively understand narrative threats as they scale and become harmful for better strategic decision-making. A diverse team of AI experts, threat intelligence analysts, and national security professionals founded Blackbird.AI to defend information integrity and fight a new class of narrative threats. Learn more at Blackbird.AI.