CFOs face rising costs to quantify executive security risk

Spending on executive protection is rising across major public companies, with disclosures showing larger outlays for corporate aircraft, personal security and related safeguards. The increases are putting chief financial officers under pressure to assign financial value to risks that may involve a single leader but can affect operations, financing and investor confidence.

Intel increased its executive security spending from $3,000 in 2023 to about $250,000 in 2024, an expansion of more than 8,000%, according to an analysis cited by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. Lockheed Martin reported in its 2025 proxy statement that $1,194,805 of chief executive compensation was tied to security, alongside $928,379 for personal use of corporate aircraft.

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia and Palantir each raised executive protection budgets by more than 10% year over year, according to a Financial Times report. Meta spent $27 million in 2025 on security for Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and his family, according to the same reporting cited by PYMNTS.

Protection moves into the risk budget

PYMNTS reported that the combined security spending figures have continued to rise during fiscal 2026 for public companies. The trend reflects a shift in how boards and finance teams view executive protection: less as a benefit for senior leaders and more as a risk control tied to business continuity.

Companies routinely model risks such as foreign-exchange volatility, liquidity pressure, cyber incidents and supply-chain disruption. Executive security is harder to measure because the avoided loss is often invisible. A company can count the cost of aircraft use, drivers, guards, surveillance systems or cyber defenses, but it is harder to calculate the reduction in risk produced by those measures.

The finance challenge is concentrated around senior executives whose absence or compromise could disrupt strategy, customer relationships, regulatory discussions, capital raising or market confidence. PYMNTS said CFOs are being asked to value the prevention of events that may not occur, while still recognizing that a serious incident could create losses well beyond physical harm.

PYMNTS Intelligence, in its 2026 Certainty Project, found that more than eight in 10 mid-sized companies operating under high uncertainty missed their 2025 performance targets. The same research found that high uncertainty was associated with lower revenue and thinner margins, and that 35% of high-uncertainty firms expected revenue to decline this year.

Aircraft and drivers test the model

Corporate aviation is one of the clearest examples of the tension between security and cost control. Some companies require chief executives to use corporate aircraft for safety, efficiency and security, including for personal travel, and proxy filings increasingly disclose those arrangements.

Personal drivers raise a similar issue. A trained driver can provide route planning, threat detection and emergency response beyond a conventional car service. PYMNTS noted that the service can also become difficult to justify if a company has not identified the risk it is intended to reduce.

Security teams already gather data on threats, travel exposure, protests, criminal activity, geopolitical conditions and the availability of executives’ personal information. Cybersecurity teams track account compromise, phishing and data leakage, while legal and human resources teams may identify litigation, labor disputes or public controversy that elevates personal risk.

The unresolved issue is converting that information into financial terms. PYMNTS said the key question for CFOs is whether a given dollar of security spending removes enough enterprise risk to justify the control, rather than whether a company is spending more or less than its peers.

This story draws on original reporting from PYMNTS.