Families protect the balance sheet, not the house. A new report maps the gap.
The State of Family Office Security 2026, a study by Presage Global and Nines, finds that most family offices apply institutional rigour to investments and tax but leave the home largely unmanaged. Sixty-two per cent of household staff receive no security training at all.
Wealthy families spend heavily on the professional side of their affairs and far less on the part of life where they are most exposed. That is the argument of The State of Family Office Security 2026, a 103-page study from the security firms Presage Global and Nines, reported by Family Wealth Report on 24 June.
The report describes what its authors call a “residential exception”. Eddie Marshall, founder and chief executive of Presage, sets it out directly: families “hire world-class investment advisors”, “retain elite tax counsel”, and “build governance structures for the operating business”, then run the home “the way they managed it in the past. Alarms on the doors. A trusted house manager who ‘knows everyone.’ A consumer camera or two.” The business gets institutional treatment. The place where the family actually lives does not.
What the figures show
The study puts numbers to the gap. Forty-seven per cent of family offices have never carried out a formal risk assessment, or only assess after something has already gone wrong. That reactive group reported the highest incident rate of any category, at 45 per cent. Sixty per cent of security improvements were prompted by an incident; only 19 per cent came out of regular assessment. Protection tends to follow the breach rather than head it off.
Staff are a soft spot. Sixty-two per cent of household staff receive no formal security training, and only 4 per cent of respondents felt their training was adequate. House managers, drivers and assistants hold keys, schedules and access, so the people closest to the family are often the least prepared.
Digital and physical risk have merged
Cyber and physical threats no longer sit in separate boxes. Sixty-five per cent of respondents named AI-powered attacks as their top emerging concern, yet only 7 per cent said they run any formal cybersecurity training for family members. Marshall points to how cheap the tools have become: a synthetic voice can be built from a single podcast clip, a deepfake can target a principal’s child, and a home address or travel pattern gives an attacker enough to plan around.
Others in the field report the same pressure. Global Guardian, an executive-protection company, said its revenues rose 47 per cent in 2025 and its protection work by 71 per cent. Its chief executive, Dale Buckner, said the most exposed moment is rarely inside a well-secured venue but on the walk to it, and that clients now weigh up whether to attend large public events at all.
Read the source with its interest in mind
Two caveats belong here. The report is the work of firms that sell security services, and Marshall sits on Family Wealth Report’s editorial board, so the direction of its conclusions suits its authors. The sample is also self-selected rather than a clean cross-section of the market. None of that makes the underlying figures wrong, but it is a reason to treat the report as a prompt rather than a verdict.
Taken that way, it reads as a checklist of what usually goes unassigned. A family assembling its advisers gives investment, tax, legal and governance each a clear owner. Residential and personal security often has none, or sits with a house manager rather than a specialist. The point worth keeping is not the alarm but the omission: the household is the one part of the enterprise families rarely staff with the same care as the rest.
Sources: Family Wealth Report — Physical, Digital Security High On Agenda For HNW Individuals.
