Pete’s journey to becoming a Chief Security Officer (CSO) for a family office began while getting an MBA. While completing his MBA program, he provided security advice on a friendly basis to some wealthy Australian families he met through the program. That offer of friendly advice eventually led to him being offered the role of Chief Security Officer for one of the most prominent five-generation families in Australia. The family had assets all around the world and had more than fifty members. And it was that unique learning experience that led to the formation of Accordant Global Partners.
“I was in special operations on Friday, and on Monday, I was sitting in a C-suite office in the family office with the mandate to ‘have a look at everything that could possibly go wrong.” –Pete Shanely describes his appointment.
Life as the currency
Pete’s takeaway on the current macroeconomic climate is this: “We have never been closer to a global war than we currently are without being in war.” This perspective, combined with his experience in special ops, is what drives him to be fluent in the current risks faced by family offices.
He describes the environment of special operations as one where ‘life is literally the currency.’ This means that the fundamental requirement for special operations is that planning and preparation ‘have to work,’ because failure carries the immediate risk of injury or death. He translates this mindset into the family office setting, advising parents on practical measures to safeguard their loved ones.
The five pillars
AGP was founded to address this gap in family offices by assembling a global network of veteran security partners. The firm now operates as an outsourced Chief Security Officer, making this strategic expertise available to numerous families.
In a nutshell, the Chief Security Officer’s role is to look after ‘all the things that could possibly go wrong’ for a family. And, if a crisis does arise, the CSO serves as the ultimate crisis manager, coordinating and supporting the family in achieving the best possible outcome. For that reason, Accordant Global Partners uses a comprehensive, multi-layered framework built on five key pillars to ensure long-term family security:
Pillar 1: Medical risk
Mitigating medical risks requires thorough preparation, including comprehensive training for family and staff on emergency procedures, as well as ensuring immediate access to medical evacuation protocols. This also requires maintaining well-equipped, accessible medical kits and defibrillators in residences, with everyone trained in their correct use. Annual staff and family training covers the proper use of equipment. As Pete emphasises, in an emergency, the focus should be on saving a life, not figuring out how the equipment works.
Pillar 2: Personal and physical safety
Personal and physical safety first refers to ensuring home security for your primary residence and any holiday homes you may have. “If you don’t secure a holiday estate, you’re pretty much gambling that for those three weeks that you’re there, nothing’s going to happen. Hope is a terrible strategy, ” says Pete. This is why AGP conducts strategic security system design and physical security assessments.
Pillar 3: Travel risk management
According to Pete, travel has become a lot more prominent a risk since the COVID-19 pandemic. And since family offices are responsible for looking after the family when they travel, AGP services range from pre-travel security and threat assessments to secure ground transport and advanced trackers that can locate family members by the second.
Pillar 4: Cyber Security
A cyber health assessment is one of the three most important risk management steps a family can take, and families need cybersecurity policies in place. Additionally, they should review contracts with third-party providers, legal teams, and tax teams to assess their cybersecurity measures. AGP cybersecurity measures include social media exposure, network penetration testing, and IoT security across all residences and devices.
Pillar 5: Bespoke/reputational risk
Bespoke and reputational risk for AGP means addressing non-conventional, highly specific threats unique to the family. In Pete’s words, this pillar includes a “whole bunch of random areas, such as the trusted insider event, kidnapping for ransom, corporate espionage, media risk, and mental health and addiction.” That’s because, “The goal is not just keeping out of the media because the family likes being private, but because less media attention means ‘global threat actors’ are looking at someone else and not looking at us.”
Learned experience
Drawing on his years as a special ops and CSO, Pete offers practical advice on three areas where family offices are the most vulnerable. Firstly, when it comes to cybersecurity, while 99% of people think the impact of a cyber event is financial loss, the true impact is far greater. “It’ll be sensitive information that’s taken. It’ll be reputational risk and it’s identity theft,” explains Pete. He then goes on to describe how identity theft, in particular, can continue for years as someone pretends to be you, opening bank accounts or buying phone plans in your name.
Secondly, on social media, he explains how almost every risk event that involves some sort of physical threat “will involve social media”. Threat actors use it to track routines and find locations. Therefore, every family should have a form of social media policy or guideline. Getting family members to agree on rules, like not posting photos of others without permission, puts the family “halfway in front of everyone else”.
Finally, the single greatest risk event to a family office is a trusted insider event. That’s because no one can prepare for when someone who has been trusted for the past twenty years suddenly causes great harm to the family. “The damage is not just the financial impact, like a CFO stealing money, but the three or four years of court cases after that,” explains Pete. His single piece of advice is to “background check people that can get close to your family, particularly your children, and know everything you can to keep them safe.”
Proactive approach
All in all, strategic family security encompasses a wide range of domains, and family offices should be proactive in their approach. Family offices should measure their preparedness across all five pillars and reach out to a professional expert where there’s a gap. As Pete emphasises, ” while you can never achieve a 100% solution, every one per cent adds up to hopefully a 70 or 80% increase in safety and security.”
