Slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO spotlights complicated test companies face in protecting top brass

recent YORK — He’s one of the most famous and widely admired corporate leaders in the globe. But it’s the haters that companies like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta worry about.

In an era when online rage and social tensions are increasingly directed at the businesses consumers count on, Meta last year spent $24.4 million on guards, alarms and other measures to keep Zuckerberg and the business’s former chief operating officer secure.

Some high-profile CEOs surround themselves with safety. But the fatal shooting this week of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson while he walked alone on a recent York City sidewalk has put a spotlight on the widely varied approaches companies receive in protecting their leaders against threats.

Thompson had no personal safety and appeared unaware of the shooter lurking before he was gunned down.

And today’s political, economic and technological climate is only going to make the job of evaluating threats against executives and taking action to protect them even more challenging, experts declare.

“We are better today at collecting signals. I’m not sure we’re any better at making sense of the signals we collect,” says Fred Burton of Ontic, a provider of threat management software for companies.

After Thompson’s shooting, Burton said, “I’ve been on the phone all day with some organizations asking for consultation, saying, ’Am I doing enough?”

Some of the biggest U.S. companies, particularly those in the tech sector, spend heavily on personal and residential safety for their top executives.

Meta, whose businesses include Facebook and Instagram, reported the highest spending on personal safety for top executives last year, filings culled by research firm Equilar display.

Zuckerberg “is synonymous with Meta and, as a outcome, negative sentiment regarding our business is directly associated with, and often transferred to, Mr. Zuckerberg,” the Menlo Park, California, business explained earlier this year in an annual shareholder disclosure.

At Apple, the globe’s largest tech business by stake evaluation, CEO Tim Cook was tormented by a stalker who sent him sexually provocative emails and even showed up outside his Silicon Valley home at one point before the business’s safety throng successfully took legal action against her in 2022.

Cook is regularly accompanied by safety personnel when he appears in community. Still, the business’s $820,000 allotted last year to protect top executives is a fraction of what other tech giants spent for CEO safety.

Just over a quarter of the companies in the Fortune 500 reported spending money to protect their CEOs and other top executives. Of those that did, the median settlement for personal safety doubled over the last three years to about $98,000.

In many companies, investor meetings like the one UnitedHealthcare’s Thompson was walking to when he was shot are viewed as very risky because details on the location and who will be speaking are highly publicized.

“It gives people an chance to arrive well in advance and receive a look at the room, receive a look at how people would probably arrive and leave out of a location,” said Dave Komendat, president of DSKomendat uncertainty Management Services, which is based in the greater Seattle area.

Some firms respond by beefing up safety. For example, tech companies routinely require everyone attending a major occurrence, such as Apple’s annual unveiling of the next iPhone or a shareholder conference, to leave through airport-style safety checkpoints before entering.

Others forgo in-person meetings with shareholders, including Amazon, which holds its annual shareholder meetings virtually.

“But there are also business cultures that really frown on that and desire their leaders to be accessible to people, accessible to shareholders, employees,” Komendat said.

Depending on the business, such an way may make sense. Many top executives are little known to the community, operating in industries and locations that make them far less prone to community exposure and to threats.

“Determining the require for and appropriate level of an executive-level protection program is specific to each organization,” says David Johnston, vice president of resource protection and retail operations at the National Retail Federation. “These safeguards should also include the constant monitoring of potential threats and the ability to adjust to maintain the appropriate level of safety and safety.”

Some organizations have a protective intelligence throng that uses digital tools such as machine learning or artificial intelligence to comb through online comments to detect threats not only on social media platforms such as X but also on the dim web, says Komendat. They look for what’s being said about the business, its employees and its leadership to uncover risks.

“There are always threats directed towards elder leaders at companies. Many of them are not credible,” Komendat said. “The question always is trying to determine what is a real threat versus what is someone just venting with no intent to receive any additional action.”

Burton, a former special agent with the U.S. Diplomatic safety Service, points out that despite the current climate, there is little in the way of organized groups that target companies.

Today, one of the primary worries are loners whose rantings online are fed by others who are like-minded. It’s up to corporate safety analysts to zero in on such exchange and decide whether or not it represents a real threat.

And CEOs aren’t the only targets of disgruntled customers. In the U.S., there were 525 workplace fatalities due to assault in 2022, according to the National Safety Council. Industries including healthcare, education and service providers are more prone to violence than others, and taxi drivers are more than 20 times more likely to be murdered on the job than other workers, the throng said.

But the ambush of UnitedHealthcare’s Thompson this week is bound to get some CEOs second-guessing.

“What invariably happen at moments like this in period is you will get additional ears listening” to safety professionals seeking money to beef up executive protection, Burton says.

“Because I can guarantee you there’s not a CEO in America who’s not aware of this incident.”

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Associated Press writers Anne D’Innocenzio and Haleluya Hadero in recent York contributed.