Security expert: your guide to AI scams, phone thefts and online safety

True Wealth: money & business podcast

Security expert Philip Grindell discusses how wealth and public profiles fundamentally alter an individual's threat profile. He argues that

Key takeaways

• Physical security measures like armored cars are often 'sticking plaster' solutions that don't address the root cause of predictability.
• Social media presence should be managed rather than deleted; owning your accounts prevents bad actors from creating fraudulent ones in your name.

Main topics

• Digital vulnerability and data footprints
• Social media privacy management

Notable quotes

Physical security... I kind of see those as sort of sticking plaster solutions. They don't stop the problem, they just stop the bleeding.

Conclusion

True security for high-profile individuals requires a layered approach

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) If you have exited from your business and made lots of money, if you are a highly successful CEO, etc., you will have a public profile. They want to know where you are at a certain time and place in order to attack you. Speaker 2 (0:10) That's Philip Grindle. He advises royalty, celebrities, and high-network families on personal security. After 30 years in policing and intelligence, Philip founded Diffuse Global, a leading Speaker 1 (0:19) security advisory firm. People overcomplicate security, and they try and make it this kind of James Bond scenario. We're not operating in that world. Many of the answers are actually quite simple. When you become successful, your threat profile changes. Speaker 2 (0:32) So today, Philip is sharing the personal security playbook you need to start implementing now. You're going to learn what we're Speaker 1 (0:40) all getting wrong about security. The way to prevent yourself being targeted or attacked is by having physical security. I kind of see those as sort of sticking plaster. solutions. They don't stop the problem, they just stop the bleeding. Why you're actually safer to Speaker 3 (0:54) have social media. Would you recommend other people basically remove themselves off social media? No, no, Speaker 2 (1:00) quite the opposite in actual fact. The simple yet overlooked steps to protect yourself or your business from new emerging threats. Because Speaker 1 (1:07) these voice clone messages, so it appears to be me phoning you because it's so good the technology. The exact steps to take if you think you're under threat without making things worse. A Directly communicated threat on its own is a very poor indicator of somebody genuinely posing you a threat. We thought we were safe online, but Philip found out way too much about us. Your security question is your favorite place, which Speaker 2 (1:33) clearly rings a bell. Speaker 3 (1:40) Philip, really, really great to have you here. Could I have a go by starting introducing you and then you can let me know if I've missed anything? Speaker 2 (1:47) Sure. Okay. You're the CEO of Diffuse Global, which helps ultra high net worth families and public figures manage threats against them. You Speaker 3 (1:54) spent over 30 years in the London Metropolitan Police as a detective on the murder squad, working on some of the UK's most high profile murder investigations. In 2005, after the London terrorist bombings that killed 52 people, British intelligence created a joint MI5 and MI6 team. So for our US listeners, that's basically like James Bond. And then brought you in from the Metropolitan Police. Then in 2016, a British elected politician was assassinated in broad daylight in her constituency. You were tasked with building a protective intelligence team for members of parliament to stop the next attack, basically. Which you did, and we're going to get onto that later. You retired in 2019 and then set up Diffuse Global. You now protect some of the world's most prominent people from A-list musicians to royalty to the ultra wealthy families. Not Speaker 1 (2:45) bad, yes. I mean, I didn't spend my whole time in murder squads or homicides as our cousins across the water would call it. I did spend 10 years in homicides. I spent time on, most of my career was in kind of specialist crime. So that would be anything from child abuse. to murders or homicides to counterterrorism organized crime so the whole kind of plethora of those of those topics um i should say the colleagues at the security service would be most upset to be called james bomb because of course that's across the river um the team actually was a joint uh if you like mi5 mi6 which is kind of like fbi mi uh cia if you like and um It was a joint team and I wasn't, they didn't create it for me. I can assure you, I was just one person on that team, but there were two of us from the Metropolitan Police and I was one of them. But other than that, pretty good. Not bad at all, actually. Better than most people get it. Speaker 3 (3:40) Fantastic. And are you able to tell us any of the people that you're working with then? Speaker 1 (3:45) No. We, you know, for obvious reasons, confidentiality is a kind of really critical factor on what our clients. ask of us and and that's for a number of reasons one is because some of the data that we identify around them is is clearly confidential and what we're trying to do is prevent others having access to it but also they're often coming to us because they don't want publicity they don't want to necessarily go to law enforcement or or anyone else and they they often just want the problem to go away so the last thing they want unless they've given specific permission is for us to discuss their um their details of who they are and all that I definitely thought it was worth Speaker 3 (4:24) a shot to ask. We Speaker 1 (4:27) knew it wouldn't work. Speaker 3 (4:29) You Speaker 2 (4:29) never know. You miss 100 % of the shots you don't take. What I'd like to do today is, obviously, we want to kind of create a masterclass for our audience and to help our audience, many of whom will have made their money through an exit or built up their wealth through their business or rising through the ranks of a big company. Speaker 2 (4:51) They're thinking about and help them understand some of the potential threats that are out there now and that might show up and what steps they can take to protect themselves. But before we get into those kind of things, what I'd like to do is kind of think of some of the more modern threats and the more kind of colorful examples out there in terms of personal security or how money is being spent on it. And so if we look at problem spaces, so I think one of the problem spaces from a security perspective is the world of crypto. Speaker 2 (5:27) So Bitcoin, crypto, it seems like there's a lot of crazy stuff happening, not just in the online space, but offline in the kind of real world threats. What are your thoughts on that? Speaker 1 (5:38) Yeah, I think your perception's correct. And we've seen quite a few cases. that fall into that category. I mean, I think, you know, the very fact that crypto is designed to be effectively untraceable causes it to be attractive to certain people and not all of them with best intentions. And what we've seen, certainly in the Middle East and certainly in Europe, are cases where crypto entrepreneurs or extremely wealthy people who've made their money through cryptocurrencies. Speaker 1 (6:12) have been targeted by organized crime, have been kidnapped and attacked, and in some cases killed, to enable the adversaries, the baddies, to get access to their wallets and effectively steal the contents of their wallets. And so I think it's a problem that is... not going to go away because it's proved to be successful for some criminals and therefore it's attractive to them. And I think some of the people involved in the crypto world, I think they don't necessarily understand the risks and I don't think they necessarily think the risks will apply to them. And I think sometimes they think, because they're quite tech minded, some of them, that they kind of understand the landscape and understand how to operate. And I think, you know, it's been, it's been demonstrated that in certain cases, that isn't the case and that they're incredibly vulnerable and have been subjected to extreme violence. And as I say, murder, the recent case I can think of top of my head is the one in Dubai where a, I think he was Russian or Ukrainian or individual and his girlfriend were lured into a meet. and taken away and never seen again, and subsequently revealed that they were both tortured in front of each other, and subsequently found dumped in the desert in bins or something similar that way. So, you know, that's an extreme example. But there's been lots of other examples I'm aware of through the industry and what have you, where people have been very specifically targeted by very dangerous, heavily armed individuals. Speaker 1 (7:55) to steal their cryptocurrency. And I think it's going, I think it's a real issue. And I think it's one that. those individuals in that environment need to take it serious. If you're Speaker 2 (8:07) enjoying this conversation, please do subscribe. We're a brand new show, so this will really help us to grow and reach more people. And in return, we promise to make this show a little better with every single episode. Sound fair? Speaker 3 (8:19) Let's get back to it. It Speaker 2 (8:21) makes sense because obviously, you know, people in the crypto space, they're tech savvy. So their, you know, their brain is 100 % on, you know, digital attacks. So, you know, people attempting to hack them and, you know, spear phishing campaigns and all of these kind of sophisticated ways when realistically somebody with a hammer is going to threaten to bash your brains in unless you hand over a password is time effective, way more efficient than trying to hack them. I actually know somebody who survived an attempted kidnapping attack. So four or five guys showed up dressed as, you know, maintenance guys at his apartment block. tried to Ocean's Eleven him out of the building. But he's a big lad. He fought them off. His wife and his kid were in the apartment, like super heart-pounding stuff. So it's, yeah, it's a scary, scary thing. When we look at the crypto, so like I was reading the quarterly annual report from Mara, which is like one of these crypto holding businesses, like a crypto specific business. And they've got to detail the CEO and board members' expenses. And they were spending half a million dollars for like per car for armored cars. And is that like normal in this space? Because to me it just seemed like completely outrageous expenditure on a car. Is this like a regular thing or what's your view on that? Speaker 1 (9:49) Well, this is where I'm going to ruffle a few feathers. Speaker 1 (9:54) Whether we're talking about crypto millionaires, crypto successful people in crypto or any other environment, whether they're, you know, we've dealt with some of the elite professional athletes around the world, some of the elite musicians around the world, et cetera, and billionaires. There is a common denominator amongst all of them. And there's a common denominator around the security industry, if you want to call it that, in a kind of global. Speaker 1 (10:24) And I'm very mindful that I'm sat here in the UK and a lot of what we're going to talk about is US-centric, where the threats are very different to here in the UK. However, the problems are the same in actual fact. And there is this common thought process that the way to prevent yourself being targeted or attacked is by having physical security. So whether that's bodyguards, residential security, armored cars, whatever. And there is absolutely a time and place for those issues. But I kind of see those as sort of sticking plaster solutions. They don't stop the problem. They just stop the bleeding. They stop the prevention. They stop the attack, if you like. But they don't really make the problem go away. And the common denominator around everything that's going on right now, if you're a... if you're a wealthy or a public figure and I use the term public figure very broadly I don't mean necessarily a politician or something I mean anybody who has a public profile and if you have exited from a from a business and made lots of money if you are a highly successful CEO etc you will have a public profile so we just include you into that public figure section and the common denominator is the data that's out there about you. and this is where I think is the critical bit, when you really look at, okay, how is somebody targeted? That's what you need to start with. Because if you suddenly surround yourself with loads of security, first and foremost, it's very claustrophobic and it doesn't always stop the problem. And we've seen time and time and time again where an individual who is fixated or a dedicated team will circumvent or overcome the security that's there. So as I'm not saying, don't have the security, and I'm not saying in the right circumstances, have an armoured vehicle. I certainly wouldn't say that's really of any value in the UK, but certainly in the US and other places, that might be really good advice. But first and foremost, you've got to understand how do they target me and how do they target my family? And then you're looking to mitigate all those issues. And the primary thing they're going to do is research you. whether they're fixated, whether they're a journalist or whether they're an organized criminal, they want to find every bit of information about you because what they're looking for is predictability. They want to know where you are at a certain time and place in order to attack you. They're very rarely just going to kind of hang around waiting for you because they risk getting spotted or seen or disrupted. So what they want to know is you're going to be at this specific location at this specific time. Now we saw this, didn't we, with the CEO that was shot and killed in New York at the conference. Yes, he hung around for a little bit, but he knew where he was coming, he knew what time roughly, he knew where, and attacked him in broad daylight. Before you start running off and getting lots of security, my argument would always be take a step back and have a proper threat assessment done on yourself, and a threat and a risk assessment, because they're two different things. And then look at, okay, What are the issues around me and how do I mitigate them? How do I reduce the amount of data that's out there about me? If they can't find where I live, that's good because they can't target me at home. Very often, if you look at the activist movement, they will know that if at work, you're going to have lots and lots of security. So certainly in the UK, we know that the activist movements will target you at home. because they know that if they get to you at home, you would not like to have much security. And also they can target your family, in which case you're emotionally involved, and that may cause you to change decision-making. So think about all these issues around, you know, really understanding how the bad guys act. It's, you know, your business, my business, whatever business you're running, we look at our clients, we look at how do they buy, what do they do? It's kind of reverse engineering the same process. So, you know... Really understand that first and foremost, get someone who knows what they're talking about in that subject to really properly research it and properly conduct a threat assessment and look for those individuals that are looking at you or paying too much attention to you or look at the amount of information that's out there. Speaker 3 (14:47) So just a quick question. So I know with myself, for example, after I sold my last company, I deleted my social media or at least like my Instagram, I got rid of it. And would you recommend other people basically remove themselves off social media? Speaker 1 (15:03) No, no, quite the opposite in actual fact. It's not having a social media account that is the problem. It's what you put on your social media account. It is, you know, let's not reveal things in our social media accounts that we don't need to. So one of our clients called us in to do what we call a digital vulnerability assessment. So basically what's out there about me? How vulnerable am I? And I'll give you two separate stories that will hopefully answer, give you some ideas around where I'm thinking. So he said to me, you won't find anything about me. I'm not on social media and I'm a really quiet private person. So we went away and when I came back to him, I presented him his Facebook account. And he said, I don't have a Facebook account. And I said, yeah, you do. This is it here. Look, and it's got all your holiday pictures on it. And you've got a few friends, not many. But interestingly, both of your daughters are friends of yours. And his wife said, that's definitely you. And those are definitely our pictures. And those are the girls. Look, they're our friends. And he said, I just don't get it. I've never had a Facebook account. And I said, that's because I've set that up. And I've used all the data that's out there that I can find about you. And I've got sufficient data to be able to set up an account and persuade Meta that I'm you. And it's so convincing that I've even persuaded your daughters to be friends. And so now I own the narrative. Now I can actually post stuff on your Facebook page. And you may eventually prove to Meta that it's not actually you. But by then the damage is done. I can be racist, homophobic, all sorts of things, say awful things and cause you all sorts of problems. Speaker 1 (16:43) So the reason I give you that example is my personal view is we should all own our social media accounts. That doesn't mean to say you have to use them, but you don't want somebody else starting up one in your name and using it in your name. So I would recommend you have all your various social media accounts that can be completely asleep and not doing anything, but you've got them. Speaker 3 (17:05) The Speaker 1 (17:06) second example was another client came to a same sort of problem. And I went back to him and said, look, Speaker 1 (17:13) I'm aware that you've got a painting in your, for want of a better word, your lounge, which is worth around about $6 million. And you've also got a holiday booked. I know that because I found the flight manifestos and what have