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After Brian Thompson of UnitedHealthcare was killed in Manhattan, the phones at corporate security firms were “ringing off the hook.”
- Dec. 6, 2024Updated 3:38 p.m. ET
A Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company raised its drug prices, and then board members and executives received phone calls threatening violence. A health care company’s board meeting was disrupted after board members were targeted in “swatting” attacks that wrongly sent law enforcement officers to their homes.
These incidents happened before the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. The police had not offered a motive for the shooting as of Friday afternoon, or said it was related to Mr. Thompson’s work in the insurance industry.
The killing, however, stunned business leaders, some of whom were already concerned about safety. Over the last five years, there has been a sharp rise in targeted attacks, digital and offline, of executives and their families, said Chris Pierson, the chief executive of BlackCloak, a digital executive protection firm. Health care, biomedical and pharmaceutical leaders tend to be targeted more often than executives in other industries, according to the firm’s data.
Digital platforms have made it easier to obtain information about executives’ identities and locations, while social media has fanned the flames of vitriol directed at these corporate leaders.
Businesses have been increasing their spending on protection: The median amount spent on executive security among the S&P 500 companies that disclose that information doubled from 2021 to 2023, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm.
Because of how frequently threats circulate online, companies and security firms must spend time and effort sorting threats by the severity of threatened harm, the likelihood of an attack and the capacity of the individual making the threat, Mr. Pierson said.
