Protecting the Executive Means Protecting Everyone They Trust | A Full Sponsor Brand Briefing at Black Hat USA 2026 with Dr. Chris Pierson, Founder and CEO at BlackCloak | Hosted by Marco Ciappelli

On the show floor at Black Hat USA 2026, Marco Ciappelli connected with Dr. Chris Pierson, Founder and CEO at BlackCloak, about a change in where the company draws the line around who gets protected. BlackCloak launched Impersonation Protection several months ago for the C-suite and their families. Clients came back asking for more reach. Why does deepfake risk extend past the executive? Because the people surrounding an executive hold the access attackers want. Pierson lists the trusts and estates attorney, the private wealth manager, the lawyer, the spiritual advisor, the dog walker. Each one is a plausible caller with a legitimate reason to reach out about money, schedules, property, or family. The economics moved too. Pierson contrasts an era when a convincing fake needed something close to a studio operation with what the same result costs now: a laptop, a small sample of audio or video, roughly three minutes of processing, live video and audio. He points to the February 2024 case where a finance employee acted on an impersonated CFO and twenty five million dollars went out the door. The expanded capability lets a member extend coverage across their circle at no cost to the invited contact. Pierson says the platform can now scale to hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of individuals at a single company, along with family members and key contacts. The point, as he frames it, is to stop the deepfake where it starts, which is at the human. What changed for executive protection over the past year? Physical and digital stopped being separate programs. Pierson traces that shift to the murder of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, and to the questions corporate security teams started asking afterward. Digital breadcrumbs sit on data broker sites and across the deep and dark web, and erasure is unrealistic, which moves the work toward protection rather than removal. That thinking shows up in the product. Members receive travel advisories tied to where they are going, and a CISO can pair a world threat dashboard with cybersecurity guidance for a specific trip. Behind it sits eight years of member data and one of the larger deception networks aimed at individuals, which shows BlackCloak where targeting concentrates, from executive airports to the Olympics to the World Cup. This is a Brand Briefing. A Brand Briefing is an on-location conversation recorded on site at Black Hat USA 2026, putting a spotlight on the guest and their company and pairing it with the editorial reach of ITSPmagazine. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/performance/#briefing GUEST Dr. Chris Pierson, Founder and CEO at BlackCloak On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drchristopherpierson/ RESOURCES Black Hat USA 2026 event coverage from ITSPmagazine: https://www.itspmagazine.com/black-hat-usa-2026-cybersecurity-event-coverage-in-las-vegas Learn more about BlackCloak: https://blackcloak.io The BlackCloak Digital Executive Protection Platform: https://blackcloak.io/product/ BlackCloak extends deepfake protection to the executive's entire trusted circle: https://blackcloak.io/news-media/blackcloak-extends-deepfake-protection-to-the-executives-entire-trusted-circle/ Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight ▶︎ Get your own Brand Briefing at an upcoming event: https://www.studioc60.com/buy-brand-briefings KEYWORDS chris pierson, blackcloak, marco ciappelli, brand briefing, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, black hat usa 2026, digital executive protection, impersonation protection, circle of trust, deepfake, executive protection, ciso, data brokers, threat intelligence, travel advisory, social engineering, wire fraud, personal cybersecurity