CASE STUDY: DIGITAL THREAT MONITORING

INCIDENT: A family client was featured in a conspiratorial, antisemitic article, spurring online threats to their physical safety.

LOCATION: United States

SERVICE:

• Deep and Dark Web Monitoring
• Digital Privacy Protection
• Physical Security Assessments

SITUATION: 

A high-net-worth family client that often makes donations to progressive organizations was featured in a conspiratorial, antisemitic article in a leading far-right outlet. The client was concerned about the exposure from the article, which also contained many negative and threatening responses in the comments section. The client contacted the Global Guardian team to understand what digital and physical threats they faced from this article—and what security measures to put into place.

RESPONSE:

After meeting with the client to understand the situation, Global Guardian immediately conducted deep and dark web sweeps to uncover if anyone was targeting the family and if any personal information could be found.  While conducting these sweeps, our team discovered that the family was the topic of discussion on a forum of a leading white-nationalist website. The post included the aforementioned article, along with links to the client’s address on Google Maps and photos of their property from Google Earth. The post had already generated numerous threatening comments.  

The clients were worried about their physical safety, so Global Guardian recommended a thorough physical security assessment of their property. A member of our team arrived on site to execute the assessment, checking for access points and camera blind spots, among other vulnerabilities. Based on this assessment, we provided a complete set of recommendations to improve the security of the property, to include camera monitoring, additional lighting, and hardened doors and windows.  

In conjunction with this physical assessment, Global Guardian also provided digital privacy protection services, removing personally identifiable information (PII) and property details from open-source records where possible. Our team continued to monitor and remove any instances of PII that appeared on an ongoing basis.  

Thanks to Global Guardian’s comprehensive suite of digital and physical security capabilities—and hyper-responsive, experienced team—the client received support to mitigate the immediate threat and safeguard their family from future threats.