Solutions
Family Offices
One security program across the people, entities, properties, and information a family office is responsible for.
Audience overview
The environment.
A family office sits at the intersection of the family's private life and its financial and legal structure. That position makes it the natural owner of security strategy, and also the party most likely to discover that no such strategy exists.
Protocol works with family offices as the coordinating counterparty — establishing what is protected, who is responsible, how vendors are managed, and how the program is documented and reviewed.
A collection of purchases fails at the joints, silently, and is discovered by an event.
Typical challenges
What usually needs solving.
01
Security responsibility is implied rather than assigned.
02
Vendors are selected and managed by different people across the family.
03
Sensitive documents and credentials are held informally.
04
Staff screening and offboarding are inconsistent across households and entities.
05
No consolidated view of exposure across principals, entities, and properties.
The Protocol approach
How a program is built.
The four stages are the same for every audience. What changes is the environment being assessed and the architecture that follows from it.
- Assess
- Map the entities, principals, properties, staff, systems, and information the office is responsible for, and identify where responsibility is unassigned.
- Design
- Define a program with named owners, documented standards, vendor requirements, and a review cadence.
- Integrate
- Bring existing vendors and internal staff onto shared standards, records, and escalation paths.
- Manage
- Maintain the program through staff changes, property changes, and changes in family exposure.
The environment
Protocol begins with a written description of what is being protected — the properties, entities, people, and systems in scope — because an architecture designed against an assumption protects an assumption.
Relevant capabilities
The work involved.
Relevant products
The systems being built for it.
Each product below is in development. None is available to purchase today.
Protocol works with family offices as the coordinating party, not as one more vendor.
Example engagement models
How the work is scoped.
Engagements are named and scoped rather than priced. Pricing follows a conversation about the environment, not a page.
Family Office Security Program
A structured program covering principals, family members, entities, offices, staff, properties, and data.
Security Governance Framework
Written standards, responsibilities, vendor requirements, and review cadence for the office to own.
Ongoing Protocol Advisory
Continuing review, vendor oversight, and program maintenance.
Illustrative scenarios
Shapes the work takes.
The following are constructed illustrations of common situations. They are not client engagements, and no client is described anywhere on this site.
Illustrative scenario.
01
Establishing ownership
An office with responsibility for four households and eleven entities has no written statement of who owns security decisions. The first deliverable is not a system — it is a governance framework naming owners, standards, and escalation.
Illustrative scenario.
02
Consolidating vendors
Nine separate security and technology vendors serve the family with overlapping scope and no shared record. The work is inventory, rationalization, and a single set of requirements every vendor is held to.
Related intelligence
Related analysis.
Start with the environment.
Speak with Protocol about a family offices requirement, an assessment, or a program that has grown past the arrangements holding it together.