CEO personal security is the S&P 500 norm. Now it gets benchmarked

Among S&P 500 companies, the share providing CEO personal security rose from 35% to 54% between FY2024 and FY2025, per a Pay Governance analysis posted to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance on 15 September. Coverage is widening: about 47% of companies now provide personal security to at least one other named executive officer (NEO), compared with fewer than 20% in FY2023 and FY2024. A minority perk is a judgment call; a majority practice is a benchmark.

The number of NEOs receiving more than $100,000 in personal security benefits rose from 18 in FY2024 to 57 in FY2025, while the number of companies providing CEO personal security benefits above $500,000 held at 29, Pay Governance found. The authors link the CEO rise partly to lower-cost digital measures. Equilar data cited by CNBC on 4 September, from a separate analysis of corporate disclosures as of early August, shows the same direction at a lower level: about 40% of S&P 500-listed firms provided security services to at least some of their executives in 2025, up from just under 19% in 2019. The two analyses count differently.

Majority status changes the problem set. Pay Governance reports reference values as well as prevalence: the median CEO personal security value rose 14% year over year, while the 75th percentile fell 18%. The authors write that "the strongest programs are supported by an independent, periodic security assessment rather than ad hoc decisions." Public appearances remain the seam for any protectee. On 6 September, NBC News reported, a man carrying two holstered handguns, a Taser and brass knuckles pushed toward Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton before her state patrol detail confronted him.

• Commission an independent, periodic assessment for every covered executive.
• Write coverage rules for other executives and families before the next proxy cycle.
• Monitor around exposure points: shareholder meetings, public appearances, court dates.
• Keep a dated record of why the spend is necessary.

OBSIDIAN — Counterintelligence is designed to detect intent, not just events. For a protection program, that means watching open-source, cyber and travel signals for signs that someone is targeting a covered executive, and raising risk-prioritized warnings with an audit-ready trail. Protection leads and analysts validate every warning and choose the response.

Prevalence is settled; defensibility is not. Programs built on a single review after the December 2024 murder of a healthcare insurance executive will be compared with peers that refresh the assessment and show the threat picture behind the number. This extends our look at executive protection spending.