The Simple Guide to Risk and Resilience in 2025

Risk management Updated on August 14, 2025

Table of Contents

The state of family office risk in 2025
The resilience gap
What resilient family offices already do
What even resilient offices get wrong
Resilience self-check
What your family office can do now
Four quick wins to try
Looking ahead

2025 is not just a more dangerous year, it’s a more connected one. Cyber breaches now trigger media leaks. Smart home hacks follow travel app compromises. A lack of vendor screening becomes a governance failure. For family offices, the most dangerous risks are the ones that cross domains: a ransomware attack can lead to reputational damage; a governance gap can cause operational paralysis in the middle of a geopolitical shock; and in an age of AI-driven impersonation, deepfakes, and OSINT-to-exploit attacks, the old assumption that “low profile equals safety” no longer holds.

This guide is designed to help family office principals, executives, and advisors move from awareness to action. It builds on the 2025 Family Office Security & Risk Report, distilling the most urgent insights into practical steps, checklists, and embedded strategies, so you design for resilience, not just react to risk.

The state of family office risk in 2025

The risk landscape facing family offices in 2025 is defined by convergence, speed, and complexity. Threats that once sat in neat categories now spill across domains, creating chain reactions that are harder to predict and harder to contain. A cyber breach can disable physical security systems and open the door to an intrusion. A geopolitical flashpoint can trigger sudden regulatory shifts that freeze capital or block transactions. A single viral narrative, whether fuelled by AI-generated misinformation or coordinated online backlash, can undermine years of relationship-building in days.

Data from the 2025 Family Office Security & Risk Report underscores this shift:

78% of family office leaders now rank cyber as their top concern, yet only 26% have a robust, tested incident response plan.
59% say physical security is “rising but under-discussed,” with crypto-related kidnappings increasingly linked to data leaks from smart devices or travel apps.
Nearly two-thirds have no formal open-source intelligence (OSINT) strategy, even though 68% of physical or reputational incidents in the past year were preceded by open-source reconnaissance.

Open-source intelligence has become one of the most exploited — and least defended — attack surfaces. Adversaries are combining publicly available information with AI-driven analysis to map routines, profile relationships, and identify vulnerabilities before launching targeted campaigns.

As Damon Spencer of Accordant Global notes, “Families that treat risk as part of operations, not a special project, are the ones that adapt fastest.” In practice, that means dismantling silos and recognising that one weak link in any domain can rapidly escalate into a multi-front crisis.

The resilience gap

Awareness is no longer the problem, readiness is. Many family offices understand the threats but operate with structures that leave them exposed when those threats materialise. Cybersecurity is often outsourced without internal oversight. Physical security is delegated to vendors who may not coordinate with other risk functions. Reputation is treated as a reactive clean-up exercise rather than a continuously managed asset.

Trust, while essential, is also over-relied upon. Longstanding advisors, senior staff, or family confidants may hold unchecked influence, creating single points of failure. This concentration of responsibility can mask vulnerabilities until a crisis forces them into view.

Even where crisis documents exist, they are often static, drafted once, filed away, and never tested under the pressure of a real or simulated event. Compound scenarios, where two or three crises unfold at once, remain particularly untested.

Common markers of this gap include:

Fragmented risk ownership, with no single point of accountability across domains.
No cross-domain drills to test how cyber, physical, and reputational teams work together.
Outdated or untested playbooks that don’t reflect today’s AI-driven, fast-moving threats.

Kate Bright of UMBRA International calls this the difference between “having a manual” and “having muscle memory”, and the latter only comes through regular practice, integration, and a culture where resilience is treated as part of daily operations, not a special project.

What resilient family offices already do

The most mature family offices don’t treat risk as a checklist item, they embed it into every layer of decision-making and daily operations. Resilience is seen as a living system, not a bolt-on, and its principles are applied consistently across people, processes, and technology.

They start by mapping how threats connect across cyber, physical, reputational, and operational domains. This mapping is not theoretical; it’s tested and updated to reflect changes in the family’s assets, footprint, and public visibility. Risk reviews are integrated into governance and succession planning, ensuring that shifts in leadership or structure don’t leave blind spots.

Regular drills simulate high-pressure, multi-domain crises, for example, a deepfake impersonation coinciding with a travel disruption and a media leak. These exercises expose gaps, strengthen coordination between functions, and build the decision-making “muscle memory” that static documents cannot provide.

Vetting processes also go far beyond standard financial due diligence. Resilient offices:

Apply OSINT and human intelligence to understand a candidate’s networks, affiliations, and past conduct.
Use values alignment checks to ensure cultural fit and reduce the risk of internal friction or reputational missteps.
Repeat vetting at intervals, recognising that circumstances and loyalties can change over time.

Finally, these offices manage their digital presence as a strategic asset. They actively curate how the family and the office appear online, ensuring that the digital footprint reflects their values, investment focus, and governance approach. By shaping their own narrative, they reduce the chances of a crisis forcing one upon them.

Where even resilient offices get it wrong

Even the best-structured family offices have blind spots, and in a crisis, those gaps can quickly become liabilities. One common weakness is unclear decision authority. When roles and escalation paths aren’t clearly defined, precious minutes are lost debating who has the power to act, and that delay can compound both operational and legal exposure.

Another is unmonitored OSINT exposure. Without active monitoring of what’s publicly available, from social media posts to property records and leaked metadata, families leave themselves open to profiling and targeting. Adversaries don’t need to hack systems when the breadcrumbs are already online, ready to be aggregated and exploited.

Vendor and third-party access is a persistent vulnerability. From IT providers to estate managers, it’s not unusual to find credentials still active years after a contract ended. These dormant access points are an open invitation for intrusion, particularly when paired with weak authentication protocols.

And while many offices conduct drills for single-incident events — a cyber breach, for example — far fewer test their ability to handle compound crises. In reality, disruptions rarely happen in isolation. A ransomware attack might coincide with travel-related security risks or an unflattering media story, requiring multiple teams to respond in parallel.

Common pitfalls include:

No single point of crisis leadership, leading to slow or fragmented decisions.
Lack of coordinated monitoring, allowing small OSINT exposures to grow unchecked.
Failure to retire old vendor credentials, leaving dormant access paths open.
Limited rehearsal of multi-domain incidents, leaving teams unprepared for cascading threats.

Resilience self-check

How many do you already have in place?

We have clear risk ownership and decision authority.
We’ve run at least one crisis simulation in the last six months.
Our OSINT exposure is monitored and managed.
Vendor onboarding includes cyber, compliance, and reputation checks.
Our governance protocols are documented and cross-functional.
Staff and family receive regular security training.
We have a narrative and reputation strategy in place.
Crisis plans cover legal, communications, cyber, and travel domains.

If you can answer fewer than five, start with one drill, one weak link, and one new protocol. Momentum matters more than perfection.

What your family office can do now

Closing the resilience gap doesn’t require reinventing the organisation overnight. The most effective improvements often come from focusing on a small number of high-impact levers, areas where targeted action delivers outsized results. These levers should work together, ensuring that what’s built in one domain strengthens the others rather than operating in isolation.

Integrate governance and security

Risk domains are too interconnected for separate treatment. Legal, compliance, tech, and operations should share data and decision-making processes. A cross-domain risk committee or working group, meeting quarterly, can pivot quickly in a crisis. Where capacity is limited, embed an outsourced Chief Security or Resilience Officer to ensure integration.

Build cross-domain visibility

Use dashboards that consolidate cyber posture, physical access controls, digital footprint health, and sentiment analysis. Combine with periodic OSINT audits to detect changes early. Assign named accountability for each domain, whether internal or external, to avoid blind spots.

Make resilience measurable

Track metrics such as simulations run, vendor checks completed, OSINT threats neutralised, and time-to-response in drills. Review progress annually, feeding results into strategic and succession planning.

Four quick wins to try

1. Run a multi-layer simulation this quarter

Most family offices have rehearsed for a single event — a cyber breach, for example — but the real test comes when crises overlap. Simulate a combined scenario: a deepfake impersonation targeting a key staff member, coinciding with a travel disruption and a damaging media leak. This forces legal, communications, IT, and operations to work in concert, revealing bottlenecks and sharpening response times. Involving principals at least once a year reinforces the seriousness of these exercises and ensures decision-making authority is clear when it counts.

2. Audit vendor and estate access

Third parties often represent the softest point of entry, whether through a misconfigured estate access system or lingering IT credentials. Review all vendors — from software providers to domestic staff — and remove outdated permissions. Implement two-factor authentication for critical systems and require vendors to meet minimum cybersecurity standards. For high-risk or high-access roles, periodic re-vetting adds an extra safeguard, especially when contracts change or roles evolve.

3. Assign a digital footprint lead

In today’s AI-driven environment, someone needs to own the office’s online visibility. This role should monitor for impersonation accounts, fringe content, and AI-generated misinformation, while proactively publishing accurate, values-aligned content to shape the narrative. A well-managed digital footprint not only mitigates reputational risk but can also act as a deterrent, signalling that the family actively monitors and defends its public image.

4. Refresh your incident communications plan

When an incident occurs, clarity and speed in communications can prevent a bad situation from escalating. Review and update holding statements for likely scenarios — cyber breach, physical intrusion, reputational crisis — and ensure key contact lists are current. Build in escalation protocols for legal, media, and cyber incidents, and store the plan securely offline in case systems are compromised. Run short, scenario-based drills so everyone knows their role and no one is left scrambling for the right words under pressure.

Looking ahead

The next 12–18 months will bring sharper and faster threats. AI-driven impersonation and misinformation will grow more convincing, making it harder to distinguish fact from fabrication in real time. OSINT-to-exploit attacks will increasingly be automated, with public data feeding directly into targeting tools without human intervention. Regulatory scrutiny will expand, particularly in the US and UK, as family offices are treated more like financial institutions and subjected to tighter compliance expectations.

Geopolitical instability will continue to shape supply chains, asset security, and even physical safety in jurisdictions once considered stable. As Philip Mirande of Control Risks has cautioned, “A country where the family have assets for many years may not be stable in three to five years,” underscoring the need for horizon scanning and contingency planning. The risk landscape will also be shaped by the growing use of drones for both surveillance and disruption, and by increasingly aggressive use of litigation — funded by third parties — as a reputational attack vector.

Michael Macfarlane sums it up: “The real battleground is no longer the courtroom, but the online world — where narratives can take hold before the facts do.” In practice, risk readiness must become a core investment, integrating governance, intelligence, and narrative control into a unified strategy.

You don’t need to do everything. But you do need to do something. The families who lead in 2025 will not be the ones with the most tools, but those with the clearest priorities, the most rehearsed teams, and the courage to close the gap between trust and readiness.
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See below some key FAQs.

What are the biggest risks facing family offices in 2025?

In 2025, the top risks for family offices include AI-driven cyberattacks, physical threats linked to digital exposure, regulatory scrutiny, and reputational damage from misinformation. Many of these threats are interconnected, making cross-domain risk management essential.

How can a family office improve resilience quickly?

Quick wins for building resilience include running multi-layer crisis simulations, auditing vendor and estate access, assigning a digital footprint lead, and updating the incident communications plan. These steps deliver immediate impact and prepare offices for compound threats.

Why should family offices integrate governance and security?

Integrating governance and security ensures that legal, compliance, technology, and operational teams work together to detect threats early, close gaps, and respond faster. This cross-domain approach reduces the risk of silos and uncoordinated responses.

How often should a family office run crisis simulations?

Experts recommend running at least one full-scale crisis simulation annually and smaller, scenario-specific drills quarterly. These exercises build decision-making “muscle memory” and help uncover weaknesses in plans, communication, and coordination.

What metrics should family offices track to measure resilience?

Key metrics include the number of crisis simulations run, vendor and estate access reviews completed, OSINT threats neutralised, and time-to-response during drills. Tracking these indicators ensures resilience remains measurable and actionable.

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