High-profile executives and firms across several industries are frantically reassessing corporate security plans following the execution-style killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, sources told Newsweek.
The apparent premeditated ambush early Wednesday in midtown Manhattan as Thompson, 50, headed to the company’s annual investor conference prompted an immediate deluge of inquiries for private and cybersecurity firms—including some clients mulling whether to restart full-time details or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on personal protection.
“As you can imagine, people are scrambling, companies are scrambling,” Charlie Carroll, CEO of ASET Corporation, which provides security for individuals, corporations and government agencies, told Newsweek.
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Carroll said Thompson’s slaying even led one prominent former client to consider restarting the full-time security team they employed for nearly a decade but stopped three years ago.
“I just said to them, ‘You can play the game and try to take care of yourself, or save a few hundred thousand dollars a year,’ ” Carroll said. “But my line of work and my company protects people against the 1 percent of what could go wrong, which will literally not only affect their remaining 99 percent, but a whole hell of a lot of other people’s livelihood.”
Carroll said he is scheduled to meet the food manufacturing executive in Boston on Monday, while a tool and die manufacturer inquired about a full-time security detail for himself and his family, including a presence surrounding investor meetings. ASET also received more than a dozen “nonserious inquiries” since Thompson’s shocking fatal shooting, he said.
“These are people that are trying to ease their stress and likely stick their toe in the water as to how much it would cost them if they went this route,” Carroll said.
Another company that manufactures medical equipment and a “very well-known name” in media also reached out for possible security services, which can cost hundreds of thousand dollars annually or several thousand per day, Carroll said.
“This is a numbers game for publicly traded companies,” he said, referencing the impact of Thompson’s killing on shares of UnitedHealth Group. “You might spend a million to two million dollars per year providing full-time security for your CEO or an important executive, but what you’re safeguarding against is something like this.”
The flurry of inquiries should continue for at least several days, Carroll said.
Thompson’s murder could be ‘game changer’
“If the [shooter’s] motive was driven by the business that he’s in and decisions that were made by the company, whatever they were, then this is a game changer,” Glen Kucera, president of Allies Universal’s Enhanced Protection Services, told Newsweek on Thursday. “I can tell you from experience in the last day and a half [that] it’s raising awareness not only in the health care business, but all the executives in the large corporations throughout.”
Allied Universal provides security services for approximately 80 percent of all Fortune 500 companies. Risk advisory consulting and threat assessments are common protocols, such as providing security to a certain company or individual based on threat levels pertaining to travel, crime rates and other factors.
They received “hundreds” of calls from executives in a 24-hour period following Wednesday’s shooting, according to Kucera, who like Thompson grew up in the Midwest and built his own personal brand over more than three decades.
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Along with billing itself as the world’s largest provider of canine detections, Allied provides armed operatives that Kucera said have been in more demand the last 18 months and really since societal tensions heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s led to an “aggressive service posture” that goes beyond a guard standing at a gate or inside a mall.
Kucera acknowledged that not every big company executive wants personal protection as some individuals simply feel their livelihoods don’t pose a direct risk to themselves or those in their orbit.
Some believe that personal security is unnecessary due to the nature of a company and the services it provides or lack of contention it may cause the public. High-profile individuals across different industries are generally more known and more easily recognizable through the internet and social media, and in turn bear the brunt of insults, attacks and sometimes threats.
“What people have to understand about the health care business is those decisions that are made impact quality of life and can be life and death decisions,” said Kucera, who works in Manhattan and didn’t know Thompson. “But if a claim is denied or services weren’t provided properly, it changes people’s lives. Those automatically become very emotional responses by the people that are impacted.
“So, because they’re in that environment—and again I don’t know the motive—but if it comes down to that business reason, then you know they have to be a little cautious on the health care side because they are dealing with the quality of life and life and death situations. So, people have a tendency to be even more emotional when something happens that they’re not in agreement with.”
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Max Anderson, chief growth officer at 360 Privacy, which protects the digital identities of executives, athletes, entertainer and wealthy families, said the company received a “massive spike” in interest since Thompson’s killing.
“Of individuals reaching out, of companies reaching out, saying ‘Hey, we want to get our executives’ information off the internet,” Anderson told Newsweek. “Their personal information, like their home address, email, vehicle registration number, license plate number, that kind of stuff.”
In addition to affluent individual clients, insurance, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and technology firms have also reached out, Anderson said.
“All of these companies have grievances against them for whatever reason,” he said. “We sort of see it all and really at the end of the day, it comes down to companies and their executives particularly [who] are going to be targeted. It’s not if, it’s when—and unfortunately, it’s becoming more frequent because it’s so easy to find these people and where they live.”
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Clients pay about $5,000 per year to keep that data as private as possible, Anderson said.
“It’s really easy to get, it’s not as spooky as the movies make it out to be, you know, some hacker in a black hoodie in a cave somewhere,” he said. “You can just go onto a number of websites and find recently compromised emails and passwords that have been recently stolen in data breaches.”
Stefan Huber, director general of the International Security Ligue that has some of the largest and most elite global security firms under its representation, told Newsweek that Wednesday’s murder has sparked a flurry of questions about security requirements.
“We at the International Security Ligue have seen an especially high demand for our free security resources,” Huber said. “This targeted killing undoubtedly will cause many companies to rethink their security posture, and many will likely find substantial gaps and the need for more personal protection of top executives and a greater security presence at corporate headquarters and company events.
“But it should also cause companies to recognize the value of regular and objective security risk assessments, and the need to make security a routine part of corporate strategic planning. Without an objective, external security risk assessment, companies should be aware of the fact-distorting biases they can fall victim to when judging risk, which is especially common following emotionally charged events.”
He advises that companies should not address security protocols “only in the aftermath of a high-profile tragic event.”
‘More complicated than ever’
Risk management company Crisis24 is also a known entity in the Fortune 500 world, providing services for “some of the world’s most prominent individuals,” the company’s senior vice president of global operations and intelligence, Mick Sharp, told Newsweek.
“[Security] has certainly been a topic of discussion that many of our clients, irrespective of location, are requesting to have conversations on,” Sharp said. “Due to our global reputation and broad offering on security, we’ve had a number of businesses reach out to discuss their current security protocols and assistance with their risk management programs or the creation of new ones.”
Aside from the cost that factors into enhanced security protocols, he said a rapidly changing society has prompted businesses and chief security officers to seek aid in the ability to monitor, collect, analyze, inform, advise and respond to fluid and complex global events on a nonstop basis.
“The biggest challenge that companies face is not as simple as personal security,” Sharp said. “The real challenge is securing reliable, validated and actionable intelligence in an increasingly complex world that has fragmented information streams. This has become increasingly difficult due to the renewed polarization of geopolitics and the unprecedented volume of misinformation and disinformation.
“As a result, organizations have found it to be a far more complicated task than ever before to mitigate risk and make informed security and business decisions in this context, especially without specialized assistance.”
Fred Cuellar, CEO of Houston-based Diamond Cutters International, said Thompson’s fatal shooting highlighted the need for him to reassess security protocol for his entire 100-employee staff, including some at 22 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, near Wednesday’s attack.
“We had an emergency meeting at the end of day where we had a five-part security plan of how we were going to reevaluate everything we’re doing to make sure not only myself and my executives are safe, but everybody in the company,” Cuellar told Newsweek.
Cuellar’s revised, multipronged approach will focus on executive and employee protection, enhanced facility fortification and cybersecurity, as well as emergency contingency plans, including evacuations.
“The meeting went for two hours, all because this happened,” Cuellar said of Thompson’s murder. “Let’s make sure we don’t have this kind of situation. You make mistakes and bad things can happen.”
Some of the largest security providers in the country declined to comment to Newsweek on their security protocols.
Messages seeking comment from prominent health insurance companies on possible changes to corporate security measures were not returned or declined due to the nature of the incident.
CVS Health declined to provide details “out of respect for the Thompson family,” a spokesman said. A Humana spokesperson provided a similar response, calling Thompson “a visionary leader in our industry” whose loss “will be felt for years to come.”
High-profile incidents like Wednesday’s shooting, the assassination attempts of Donald Trump and the October 7 attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel typically cause a spike in interest for private security, according to Cory Wenter, owner and CEO of Pangaea Consulting, which specializes in emergency management and security operations.
“Humans tend to be more reactive than proactive when it comes to safety,” Wenter told Newsweek. “But most are in tune when things around them are unstable, and that is when they want our help.”
