High Net Worth Security Services: What a Program Includes

Posted On:Oct 18, 2026
Posted By:Michael Braun

High net worth security services are a program, not a guard

High net worth security services are often bought one piece at a time: an alarm contract here, a patrol there, an officer at the gate when a threat appears, a driver who is “also security.” Two incidents at Los Angeles-area homes this September, and a set of figures published in October, show why the pieces only work when someone has designed them to fit together.

On the night of Friday, September 11, 2026, a woman got onto the Malibu property of former Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, while neither was home. According to the Los Angeles Times, on-site security personnel stopped her before she reached the house and contacted the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Deputies from the Malibu/Lost Hills station arrived around 10:30 p.m., warned her and advised her to leave, and she left voluntarily. A trespassing report was taken, nobody was arrested, and the station said it would step up patrols as a precaution.

Two days earlier, on Wednesday, September 9, LAPD officers responded to a report of a possible hot prowl burglary at a Hollywood Hills home believed to belong to director Quentin Tarantino. ABC7 reported that a man described as 35 years old had been seen on the property just before 12:30 p.m. and was gone before police arrived. NBC Los Angeles said officers searched the house, found no one inside and nothing apparently missing, and took a trespassing report. Tarantino was not home.

Then on October 6, Yahoo Finance reported new Conference Board figures: 34 percent of S&P 500 chief executives now report having personal and home security, up from 18 percent in 2024, and 60 percent of CEOs at Russell 3000 companies with at least $50 billion in annual revenue receive personal and home security benefits. “They are no longer perks,” Conference Board CEO Steve Odland said. “It is a requirement in order to do the job.”

This article supports the section of our 2026 guide to high net worth security that describes what a professional program includes. In the guide I list the components. Here I explain each one in practical terms, how they connect, what they look like in a real household, and how a family or family office can tell whether what they have is a program or a collection of services.

Residential security officer watches estate camera feeds of the gate, driveway and garden in a security room at night

Key takeaways

A security program is designed around an assessment of the family’s actual risks, not around whichever services were easiest to buy.
In Malibu, according to the sheriff’s department and the Harris spokesperson, on-site security stopped the trespasser before she reached the house and handed the situation to deputies. That is detection, intervention and law enforcement liaison working together.
In the Hollywood Hills, a man was seen on the property in daylight while the owner was away. Somebody seeing and reporting that is part of the program, and so is what happens next.
Corporate boards increasingly treat executive security as a requirement. Families without a board should apply the same discipline to their own decisions.
A complete program covers assessment, protective intelligence, residential security, close protection, staff and vendors, response and law enforcement liaison, medical readiness, technology and governance.
The family office should be able to see the whole program on one page, with a named person accountable for each part.
If you cannot explain how your security providers work together on a bad night, you do not yet have a program.

What happened in Malibu and the Hollywood Hills

I want to describe these incidents carefully, because in neither case was anyone hurt or charged, and neither should be blown up into something it was not.

In Malibu, the Los Angeles Times quoted a statement from Harris’s spokesperson, Eduardo Negrón: “Last night, security personnel stopped an individual who illegally entered Vice President Harris and Second Gentleman Emhoff’s property before the individual reached the home. They are grateful to the security and law enforcement personnel who responded swiftly.” Lt. Jason Duron, a watch commander at the Malibu/Lost Hills station, told the paper that his department was contacted by Harris’s security detail when a woman attempted to enter the property. NBC News quoted the sheriff’s department as saying that when deputies arrived they made contact with the private security detail, and that the individual, who was outside the property by then, was warned and left voluntarily without incident.

The Times noted the wider context of Harris’s protection arrangements after the federal extension of her Secret Service coverage was revoked in 2025, and reported that California Highway Patrol officers continue to assist her detail but were not on site that night. I am not going to comment on the politics. For this article, what matters is the sequence: a person entered the property, the people on site stopped her before she reached the house, they called the sheriff’s department, deputies arrived and dealt with her, and the station increased patrols.

In the Hollywood Hills, the facts are thinner. ABC7 reported that a trespassing report was taken after a suspect was seen on the property just before 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, that the man was gone before police arrived and had not been found, and that police said there was no evidence of a burglary and nothing appeared to have been taken. NBC Los Angeles said officers initially responded to a report of a hot prowl, meaning someone might be inside, and searched the house but found no one.

Neither incident became a crime story. That is the point. In both cases, someone noticed a person who should not have been there, and the response happened. Whether it happens that way at your house depends on what you have built.

Why boards now call security a requirement

The Conference Board figures reported by Yahoo Finance are about public company chief executives, not private families. But they are useful, because they show how a group of people who have to justify their spending to shareholders now think about personal protection.

According to the report, 34 percent of S&P 500 CEOs report having personal and home security, up from 18 percent in 2024. Among Russell 3000 companies, the figure rose from 5 to 11 percent. At Russell 3000 companies with at least $50 billion in annual revenue, it is 60 percent. Steve Odland, the Conference Board’s chief executive, told Yahoo Finance: “When you have your children threatened, you need security. You need to be taken care of. You can’t walk through airports. And these aren’t perks. This is part of protecting your assets of the firm.”

The article links the shift to the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive outside a Manhattan hotel. Boards that once treated security as a perk now treat it as part of the cost of having a leader do the job safely.

Private families do not have a compensation committee asking whether security is justified. That is both a freedom and a risk. It means families can move quickly. It also means that decisions are often made reactively, after a scare, and without the discipline of asking what the program is meant to achieve. The idea I take from the boardroom is not the spending; it is the shift from treating security as a privilege to treating it as a requirement that is planned, budgeted, reviewed and accountable.

The components of a professional program

In my experience, a complete program for a UHNW family covers the following areas. Not every family needs every area at the same intensity, but every family should have consciously decided how much of each it needs.

Assessment. A structured understanding of the family’s exposure, their residences, their routines and their vulnerabilities.
Protective intelligence. Ongoing attention to who may be taking an interest in the family, from online threats to people seen near the house.
Residential security. Perimeter, access control, alarms, cameras, lighting, monitoring and, where justified, on-site officers.
Close protection. Protection that travels with family members: drivers, agents, advance work and travel planning.
Staff and vendors. Vetting, training, access management and routines for everyone who works in or around the household.
Response and law enforcement liaison. Written plans for incidents, and working relationships with the agencies that respond.
Medical readiness. Equipment, training and plans for injuries and medical emergencies.
Technology. Systems that detect, record, communicate and keep working when someone tries to defeat them.
Governance. Who owns the program, who pays for it, how it is reviewed and how decisions are made.

I explain each of these below. If you want a shorter version of the idea, our earlier post a security presence is not a security program makes the same argument in a few hundred words.

Assessment: knowing what you are protecting and from whom

Every program I build starts with an assessment, because without one, a family is buying security based on fear, habit or a salesperson’s recommendation. The assessment is not a report that sits in a drawer. It is the foundation that every later decision refers back to.

A proper assessment covers three things.

The people. Who is in the family, what their public exposure is, what they do, where they go and how predictable their days are. A family where one member is a public figure, another runs a business with controversial decisions and the children attend a well-known school has a very different profile from a private family with a low public presence.

The places. Each residence, office and regular destination: the perimeter, approaches, entry points, sightlines, lighting, the existing technology, the response environment and the neighborhood. In Malibu, the cliffside setting described by the Los Angeles Times shapes how a property can be approached. In the Hollywood Hills, steep lots and multi-level houses create access points that are hard to see from the street. Those details matter.

The threats. What has actually happened to this family or people like them, what is happening in their area, and who might reasonably want to harm, steal from, harass or embarrass them. This includes known individuals, such as former employees, people who have sent threatening messages or people with a fixation, as well as the general criminal environment.

The assessment ends with a written set of priorities: what the program must protect against first, and what level of protection is proportionate for each person and place. Our post on UHNW security audits in Southern California describes how we run that process. The important thing is that the assessment is refreshed when circumstances change: a new home, a new public role, a new threat, a change in the household.

Protective intelligence: watching for people who are watching you

Protective intelligence is the part of a program that tries to see trouble coming. It is less dramatic than the name suggests. Much of the work is attentive, patient and quiet: monitoring for threats and concerning interest, recognizing patterns, and making sure that what one person notices reaches the people who can act on it.

In practice it includes:

Monitoring public online spaces for threats, concerning fixations, exposure of addresses and schedules, and planned protests or gatherings near the family’s homes or events.
Assessing concerning communications that arrive by mail, email, social media or through the family’s businesses.
Collecting and reviewing reports from residential officers, drivers, staff and neighbors about people or vehicles near the home.
Tracking known persons of concern and assessing whether their behavior is escalating.
Briefing the protective team before travel or events on anything relevant.

I do not know who the Malibu trespasser was or why she came, and the public reports do not say. But in incidents like that, one of the first questions a protective intelligence function asks is whether the person is known: has she written to the family, appeared at events, posted about them or been seen near the property before? The answer determines whether the incident is closed with a report or becomes an ongoing case. The sheriff’s station, for its part, said it would increase patrols in the area as a precaution.

The digital side of this work is a lead-in to the physical, not a separate discipline. We look online because what people say and share there often tells us where they will turn up in person. Our post on protective intelligence from online to physical goes into more detail.

Home security for high net worth individuals: perimeter, monitoring and on-site officers

Home security for high net worth individuals is usually the largest and the visible part of a program, and it is where families often have pieces that do not connect. The Malibu incident is a good illustration of what connected looks like: the person was detected on the property, intercepted before the house, and handed off to law enforcement, in that order.

I think of residential security in layers, working from the outside in:

The approach. Who can see the house from the street, how vehicles and pedestrians approach, and where someone could wait or watch without being noticed.
The perimeter. Walls, fences, hedges, gates, terrain. The goal is not to make the property impregnable, but to define clearly where the private space begins and to slow and channel anyone who crosses it.
Detection at the perimeter. Cameras with analytics, beams or fence sensors, and lighting that let the people responsible see someone crossing before they reach the house.
The space between perimeter and house. This is the time a response team has to act. In Malibu, it is where the trespasser was stopped.
The house shell. Doors, glass, locks, alarm sensors and the routines that keep them closed.
The interior. Motion detection, protected rooms, a safe room and the household’s own procedures.

Monitoring ties the layers together. Somebody has to be watching, whether it is an on-site officer, a remote video operator or a command center. Our post on the estate command center describes how that works at larger properties.

On-site officers are the layer that turns detection into immediate human response. They can walk out and meet someone who has crossed the perimeter, ask them to leave, keep them away from the house, call the police and describe what is happening. That is exactly what the reports describe in Malibu. Without someone on site, the same detection produces an alert, then a phone call, then a dispatch, and the person on the property has several more minutes. Whether a family needs on-site officers is a question for the assessment. Our post on patrols versus 24/7 on-site security explains how I make that call.

Daytime incidents deserve a word, because families often concentrate security at night. The Hollywood Hills incident happened just before 12:30 in the afternoon. Daytime brings gardeners, cleaners, deliveries and contractors, gates that open and close often, and more noise and activity that can hide a stranger. A program that is sharp at night and relaxed during the day leaves half the clock exposed.

Close protection for UHNW families outside the home

Close protection for UHNW families covers family members when they leave the house: commuting, school runs, meetings, dinners, events, travel. It is the part of a program people picture when they think of bodyguards, but in a well-designed program, much of it is planning rather than standing next to someone.

The core elements are:

Trained drivers and suitable vehicles, because so many incidents happen around cars, arrivals and departures.
Route and schedule planning, so that the family is not predictable in ways that matter.
Advance work for events, venues and travel, so that the team knows the ground before the family arrives.
Protective agents where the risk justifies them, scaled to the person and the situation.
Coordination with the residential side, so that departures and returns are handed over cleanly.
Travel security for trips, with assessment, vetted local partners and monitored check-ins.

Close protection should be proportionate. A family member who lives a quiet life may need nothing more than a trained driver for certain trips. A principal with a high public profile and a known threat may need a full-time detail. Many families sit somewhere in between, and the right answer changes over time. Our post on close protection for UHNW families in Los Angeles covers how that scaling works here.

Personal security for high networth individuals in daily life

Personal security for high networth individuals is the part of the program that each person carries with them: their habits, their awareness, their choices. It is cheap, it is effective and it is often neglected because it depends on the principal rather than on staff.

I want every adult in a protected family to understand a few things about their own security:

How their public exposure works, what information about them and their homes is public, and how to avoid adding to it unnecessarily.
When they are predictable, and which predictable moments matter: the same coffee shop at the same time, the gym, the school gate.
What to do if they feel they are being followed, are approached by someone who makes them uneasy or find someone at the house.
How to contact the security team at any hour, and that they should do so without hesitation.
Not to post locations in real time, and to be thoughtful about what photos reveal.
That their instincts matter. If something feels wrong, they should act on it and tell the team.

For principals who are publicly recognizable, the guidance goes further, including how to handle approaches in public, when to leave a venue and how to work with an agent. But even a family with no public profile benefits from these basics, because they are the layer that is present when everything else is not.

Staff, vendors and the people inside the perimeter

Every program has to account for the people who are allowed inside the perimeter: household staff, contractors, landscapers, pool services, delivery drivers, caterers, event staff and guests. They are necessary, and almost all of them are trustworthy. They are also the largest group of people who know the house, the routines and the family.

The program covers them in four ways:

Vetting before people start, proportionate to their access. Our post on household staff vetting covers that.
Access control, with individual codes, scheduled access, escort rules for contractors and immediate removal when someone leaves. Our post on vendor access control goes into detail.
Training, so that staff know the household routines, how to verify visitors and what to do in an emergency.
Information discipline, so that staff know what not to share about the family and why.

Staff are also sensors. In many daytime incidents at homes, the person who notices first is a member of staff. A program that trains staff to notice and report, and gives them a clear channel to do so, is far stronger than one that treats them as a risk to be managed.

Events, gatherings and the open-gate problem

A program also has to account for the days when the household deliberately opens up: parties, fundraisers, weddings, holiday gatherings, children’s birthday parties, film screenings, dinners for business partners. These are the days when the gate stays open, dozens of unfamiliar people come onto the property, caterers and valets move freely and the family is distracted by being good hosts.

Events concentrate several risks at once. A guest list can leak. Vendors bring staff the household has never met. A person with a fixation can try to get in as a guest’s companion or as part of a crew. Rooms that are normally private are suddenly reachable. And after the event, when everyone is tired, the house is often less secure than usual: doors left open, alarms not reset, valuables moved.

The program’s event planning covers the guest list and how it is checked at the door, vendor and staff lists with names in advance, which parts of the house are open and which are closed and watched, parking and valet arrangements, a plan for an uninvited or disruptive person, medical cover and the reset of the house afterward. Our post on private event security in Los Angeles explains how we plan these days. The point for the program is that events are written into it, not handled with an extra guard on the night.

Neighbors, the street and the people outside your perimeter

A program does not end at the property line. Some of the earliest warnings about a home come from outside it: a neighbor who notices the same car parked on the street for two afternoons, a neighbor’s camera that catches someone walking the hillside behind the house, a homeowners association patrol that sees a person photographing gates. In hillside neighborhoods like the Hollywood Hills, where houses sit close together on steep lots and approaches are hidden from the street, neighbors often see things the household cannot.

I encourage families, where they are comfortable doing so, to have a quiet working relationship with the immediate neighbors and their staff, and with any neighborhood or association security. That does not mean sharing the family’s schedule or security arrangements. It means exchanging contact details for emergencies, agreeing to mention unusual activity and, where it is appropriate, sharing camera footage after an incident. Our post on coordinating with homeowners associations describes how that works in gated communities.

Response and law enforcement liaison

In both September incidents, police took a trespassing report. In Malibu, according to the Los Angeles Times, the sheriff’s department was contacted by Harris’s security detail, and NBC News quoted the department as saying deputies made contact with the private security detail on arrival. That handoff, from private security to sworn officers, is a part of every program that families rarely think about until they need it.

A program’s response planning covers several layers:

Written incident procedures for the likely situations: trespasser on the property, intruder in the house, suspicious vehicle, threatening communication, protest at the gate, medical emergency, fire, and a family member missing or not checking in.
Clear authority. Who on the security team can call the police without asking the family first, who decides whether to move the family to a safe room or off the property, and who speaks for the family.
Information ready for responders. Gate codes, a site plan, the number of people likely to be in the house, whether there are dogs or firearms, and where the officers should meet the security team.
Relationships. Knowing the local station, its watch commanders and community liaison officers before there is a problem.
Documentation. Notes, times, footage and names recorded immediately and preserved, so that a trespassing report today can support a restraining order or prosecution later if the same person returns.

Private security officers in California are not police. They can observe, report, ask people to leave private property on the owner’s behalf and, in limited circumstances, make a citizen’s arrest, but their role is to protect the family and support law enforcement, not to replace it. The Malibu sequence, as reported, is a good example of that role: stop the person short of the house, call the sheriff’s department, let deputies handle it.

Documentation deserves emphasis. A trespass with no arrest can look like the end of a story. Often it is the beginning, if the same person comes back or turns out to have a fixation. A program that writes down every detail, keeps the footage and tracks whether the person reappears gives the family options later.

Medical readiness

Medical readiness is a component that is often left out of security programs, and one that families end up using more than they expect. In my experience, falls, allergic reactions, cardiac events, accidents and injuries at homes and on trips are far more common than attacks. And when there is an attack, the minutes before paramedics arrive can decide the outcome.

A program’s medical readiness includes trained people (officers, drivers and agents with current first aid and trauma training), equipment (trauma kits and defibrillators in the house, in vehicles and in travel kits), plans (the nearest suitable hospitals for each residence and destination, how paramedics get through the gate, who goes with the patient), and information (a confidential, up-to-date summary of relevant medical conditions and allergies for each family member, held securely by the team). Our post on estate medical readiness covers this.

Technology, and MSB in-house research and development

Technology in a security program does four things: it detects, it records, it communicates and it helps people decide. Families often have plenty of the first two and very little of the last two. They own dozens of cameras that record beautifully, and nobody watching them, and no clear way for an alert to reach the right person.

When I review a family’s technology, I ask practical questions. Do the systems keep working and reporting when house power or internet is cut? Do alerts reach someone who is awake and responsible? Can the on-site officer, the remote monitoring operator and the family office all see what they need? Is there a single record of incidents and reports across all residences? Are the systems themselves secure, so that the camera feeds and alarm controls are not available to someone who should not have them?

At MSB Protection we run our own in-house research and development, building and testing tools and methods against the threats our clients face. That work grew out of a simple frustration: much of what is sold to households records incidents well but does little to help a team notice, decide and respond. We would rather build what our teams actually need. I mention it here not as a product pitch, but because technology should serve the program, and when the market does not offer what a program needs, someone has to build it.

Security for UHNW family offices: governance, budget and reporting

Security for UHNW family offices is, at its core, a governance question. The Conference Board figures show public companies putting security inside a formal decision-making process. A family office can do the same, without the bureaucracy.

In practice, I want the family office to have:

A named owner for the security program, usually a senior person in the family office, who is accountable for it and has the authority to make decisions.
A written program summary, one or two pages, listing each component, who provides it, what it covers and who is responsible.
A budget linked to the assessment’s priorities, rather than to whatever was spent last year.
Regular reporting from the security providers: incidents, reports of concern, systems status, staffing changes, training completed.
An annual review of the assessment and the program, plus a review after any significant incident.
Clear contracts with providers that set out scope, standards, supervision, insurance and how the relationship ends.

The family office is also responsible for the information that makes a family vulnerable: calendars, travel, addresses, staff schedules and payment flows. Our posts on family office authority control and guarding the schedule cover that side.

Family office high net worth individuals security on one page

Family office high net worth individuals security becomes far easier to manage when the whole program fits on a single page that the family office head can read in two minutes. I ask every family office we work with to keep that page current. It lists each residence and each family member, the protection level assigned to each and why, the provider responsible, the named owner inside the family office, the date of the last assessment and test, and any open issues with a date for fixing them.

That page does three things. It shows at a glance where the program is strong and where it is thin. It makes it obvious when something has been forgotten, such as a second home with no current assessment or a family member who has moved out and is no longer covered. And it gives the family a simple way to make decisions: if a new threat appears, everyone can see what is already in place and what needs to change.

Like the property register and the itinerary, the page is sensitive. It should be held by a small group, stored securely and never circulated widely. But it should exist, because a program that cannot be summarized on one page is usually a program that nobody fully understands.

Contracts, insurance and the provider relationship

A program usually involves several providers: an alarm and monitoring company, a residential security company, a patrol service, drivers, perhaps a travel security partner and a technology installer. The contracts with those providers are part of the program, because they decide what each one is obliged to do, what happens when something goes wrong and how the family can change course.

I want every contract to state the scope clearly, including hours, locations, duties and exclusions. I want it to set out supervision and reporting, so that the family office receives regular information rather than having to ask. I want proof of licensing and insurance attached, renewed and checked each year. I want confidentiality obligations that cover the family’s information and the security arrangements themselves. And I want a clean exit: what information, keys, codes and equipment are handed back, and how the transition to a new provider is managed so that there is no gap in coverage.

Families sometimes keep a provider for years out of loyalty or inertia, long after the service has slipped. A program with clear contracts and regular reporting makes it easier to see when that is happening and to address it before an incident does it for you.

Reporting that the family office actually reads

Every provider in a program produces information: shift logs, alarm events, patrol reports, incident reports, camera faults, training records. In many households, that information goes into an inbox nobody opens. Then, months later, after an incident, someone discovers that the officer had reported the same unfamiliar car three times, or that a camera covering the side gate had been offline since spring.

I want reporting designed for the reader. For the family office, that usually means a short monthly summary: incidents and reports of concern, systems that are down and when they will be fixed, staffing changes, training completed and anything the family needs to decide. Urgent matters go immediately by phone, not into the summary. Detailed logs are kept and available, but the summary is what gets read. A family office that receives this every month, and asks questions about it, will notice patterns and drift long before they turn into a problem.

Private security for high net worth family members: one program, different people

Private security for high net worth family members has to fit each person. A program that applies the principal’s protection level to everyone wastes money and frustrates people. A program that ignores everyone except the principal leaves the family exposed. The Conference Board’s Steve Odland put it directly in his Yahoo Finance interview: “When you have your children threatened, you need security.”

I build each family member’s protection from the same assessment, scaled to their exposure. A spouse with an independent public role may need their own driver and close protection for events. Teenagers may need a school-run plan, guidance on social media and a phone number to call. Elderly parents may need residential coverage at their own home and support for medical appointments. Adult children living independently may need an assessment of their own home and help with travel.

What ties it together is that everyone is in the same program: the same intelligence picture, the same response plans, the same family office oversight. If someone fixated on the principal turns up at the daughter’s apartment, the program should already know who that person is.

What recommended HNW security teams put in writing

One practical way to judge a provider is to ask what they will put in writing. Recommended HNW security teams are not shy about documentation, because documentation is how a family knows what it is getting and how the team holds itself to a standard. I wrote about selection more broadly in our post on what separates recommended HNW security teams.

At a minimum, I would expect a provider to give you in writing:

The assessment findings and the priorities that follow from them.
The scope of services: what is covered, when, where and by whom, and what is not covered.
Post orders for officers: what they do, where they go, what they report.
Incident procedures and the authority each role has.
Licensing, registration and insurance details.
Supervision arrangements: who checks on the officers and how often.
Reporting: what the family office will receive and how often.
Training: what the team has done and what it will do with the household.
How the relationship ends, including handover of information and access.

If a provider is reluctant to write these things down, that is information in itself.

Gaps I find again and again

When I review existing arrangements for a family, the same gaps come up so often that I now look for them first. None of them requires a large budget to fix. All of them have been factors in incidents I have seen or studied.

Nobody owns the whole program. The alarm company, the patrol, the driver and the officer at the gate each report to a different person, or to nobody.
The assessment is out of date. It was done when the family bought the house, before the children were teenagers, before the public role, before the new threats.
Technology depends on house power and internet, so it goes quiet when someone wants it to.
Response plans are verbal. Everyone has a rough idea of what would happen, and the ideas do not match.
Daytime is under-covered, because the family assumes the risk is at night.
Staff are not part of the plan. They have never been told what to do if a stranger is on the property.
Codes and keys have accumulated over years, with former staff and contractors still able to get in.
The family’s other homes have a lower standard, with old alarm contracts and nobody checking.
Medical readiness is missing, with no trauma kit and nobody trained.
Incidents are not recorded, so patterns are never seen.

Building the program in stages

Families sometimes hear “program” and assume it means a large, expensive project. It does not have to. Programs are usually built in stages, starting with what the family already has.

In the first month, the work is understanding: the assessment, a review of every existing service and contract, a walk of each residence, interviews with staff, and a list of the gaps that matter.

In the second month, the work is design and quick fixes: writing the program summary, putting response plans in writing, fixing technology that fails without power, clearing out old codes and keys, briefing staff and assigning a named owner in the family office.

In the third month, the work is filling the bigger gaps identified by the assessment, which might mean adding on-site coverage during certain hours, bringing in a trained driver, starting protective intelligence monitoring or improving perimeter detection, and then testing the whole thing with a drill.

After that, the program runs on a rhythm: monthly reporting, quarterly drills and reviews, and an annual reassessment. That rhythm is what keeps a program from turning back into a collection of services over time.

The order matters. Families who start by buying equipment or hiring more officers, before the assessment and design, often end up paying for things that do not address their real risks. Families who start with understanding usually find that the first improvements are cheaper than they expected.

A self-check: do you have a program or a set of services?

Families often tell me they “have security.” Here is a short self-check I use to find out what that means. Answer each question honestly:

Is there a current written assessment of your family’s risks, less than a year old?
Can one person in your family office describe every security service you pay for, who provides it and what it covers?
If someone crossed your perimeter at 11 p.m. tonight, do you know exactly who would see it, who would respond and how long it would take?
If it happened at 12:30 p.m., would the answer be the same?
Do your cameras and alarm keep working and reporting if the power is cut?
Do your household staff know what to do if a stranger is on the property?
Do you know whether anyone has expressed a concerning interest in your family in the last six months?
Does your security team know the local station’s watch commander?
Is there a trauma kit in the house and someone trained to use it?
Does every family member’s protection come from the same plan?

If you answered no or “I am not sure” to several of these, you probably have services rather than a program. That is fixable, and it usually does not require spending more. It requires designing what you already have so that the pieces work together.

Frequently asked questions

What do high net worth security services include?

A complete program covers assessment, protective intelligence, residential security, close protection, staff and vendor management, response and law enforcement liaison, medical readiness, technology and governance. Each family needs a different mix, decided by an assessment of their actual risks.

Is home security for high net worth individuals enough without close protection?

For some families, residential security plus a trained driver and good personal habits is proportionate. For others, especially those with public profiles or known threats, close protection outside the home is needed. The assessment should decide.

How much should a family spend on high net worth security services?

I do not publish a figure, because cost depends entirely on the number of people, residences, the threat picture and the level of coverage. A useful principle is that spending should follow the assessment’s priorities, not habit or fear.

What is the role of private security when police respond?

To protect the family, observe, report, keep the person away from the house if possible, give responding officers the information they need and then step back and support them. Private security officers are not police.

How often should a security program be reviewed?

At least once a year, and after any significant change: a new home, a new public role, a threat, an incident or a change in the household.

Bringing the program together

In Malibu, the reports describe a sequence that worked: a person got onto the property, security stopped her before the house, called the sheriff’s department, and deputies dealt with her. In the Hollywood Hills, someone was seen on the property in daylight, police came, searched and found nothing missing. In October, the Conference Board’s figures showed that companies increasingly treat this kind of protection as a requirement of leadership rather than a perk.

High net worth security services become a program when they are designed together from an assessment, owned by someone accountable, documented, tested and reviewed. That design is what decides whether the next trespasser is stopped short of the house or found in the kitchen.

For the complete framework, read our 2026 guide to high net worth security. If you would like us to look at what you have now and help turn it into a program, start with a security assessment, or contact us for a confidential conversation about residential security or executive protection.

Sources

About Michael Braun

Michael Braun is a former Special Unit Operator, former Manager at Gavin de Becker & Associates, and Founder & CEO of MSB Protection, an executive protection and residential security firm serving high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients.

Braun has built his career at the intersection of specialized protective operations, executive protection, residential security, protective intelligence, and security risk management. His experience spans special-unit operations, leadership within Gavin de Becker & Associates, and the development and oversight of private protection programs within demanding UHNW environments.

He has been recognized by The Top 100 Magazine as a leading CEO in the private security field and is the subject of an upcoming Marquis Who’s Who feature highlighting his leadership and contributions to the profession.

Today, Braun is recognized for his work in executive protection, UHNW estate security, residential protection, protective intelligence, adversarial security assessments, and security auditing throughout Beverly Hills and Southern California.

His work focuses on moving private security beyond simply “providing a body” and toward intelligence-led, risk-based protection programs designed to identify vulnerabilities before an adversary can exploit them.

Looking for Executive Protection or Residential Security Services?

If you are a high-net-worth or ultra-high-net-worth individual, family office, estate manager, chief of staff, or executive in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Malibu or Southern California, MSB Protection provides executive protection, residential security, 24/7 protection, protective intelligence, medical-readiness planning, and security risk management.

We evaluate the complete security environment, from threat exposure and residential vulnerabilities to personnel, technology, procedures, protective intelligence, and emergency response, and build a program around the risks that actually exist.

Contact us for a confidential consultation or message us at +1 (805) 285-2807.

High Net Worth Security Services: What a Program Includes