A convincing deepfake now takes a laptop, a small voice sample, and about three minutes, and the person placing the call is rarely the executive. Chris Pierson explains why BlackCloak widened protection to the attorneys, advisors, assistants, and family members who surround the people attackers actually want to reach.
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
Protecting the Executive Means Protecting Everyone They Trust | A Brand Briefing at Black Hat USA 2026 with Dr. Chris Pierson, Founder and CEO at BlackCloak | Hosted by Marco Ciappelli
[00:00:00] Marco Ciappelli: We're rolling. Do you know who I am? How do you know it's me?
[00:00:26] Chris Pierson: I know.
[00:00:27] Marco Ciappelli: Even without this, how do you know it's me?
[00:00:29] Chris Pierson: I don't know, man. We're gonna do a cheek swab. That's what we're gonna do, one of those. We're gonna go for drinks later on, and then I'm gonna go ahead and get the DNA from that. Yeah, I'm gonna make sure, make sure we know who you are.
[00:00:41] Marco Ciappelli: Chris. So good to see you. It's always good to see you, my friend. Always good. It seems like yesterday that we had a few conversations, and it kind of was, 'cause we already, you know, met with you and the team, and today we are actually at the booth. Got a lot of faces. Faces, amazing. Yeah, they're kind of glitchy. Yeah. And I know there is a strong message there, but hey, it's BlackCloak. It's been going around now for a few years. All started with a great idea of yours, which we will go back down memory lane and talk about. But let's start with you. Who is Chris? For real? For real.
[00:01:17] Chris Pierson: No, no, no fake glasses.
[00:01:18] Marco Ciappelli: No fake glasses.
[00:01:20] Chris Pierson: I mean, look, at the end of the day, I'm someone that's just very, very passionate about making sure that we're able to protect the digital lives of those key people that we're protecting. But for me, the story started maybe 25 years ago. Very heavily involved in privacy, heavily involved in the law firm aspect of things. You know, had a law firm, practiced national law firm cybersecurity back in 2002. A little bit of government work, special government employee for about 11 years. Former Chief Privacy Officer, which I think is almost round about just after that when you and I met. Yeah. Former Chief Privacy Officer from the Royal Bank of Scotland. So how do you mesh fraud and cyber and privacy and bring it together? And then two-time Chief Information Security Officer. So, two different fintechs. And I mean, what's really great is, like, how do you think about those ones and zeros? How do you think about the attack surface? How do you think about offense? How do you think about defense? And then how do you think about it, the final chapter, with BlackCloak, is how do you think about it outside the four walls of the environment. But at the end of the day, I'm someone who loves those relationships, loves the technology, loves the people aspect of it, loves protecting the brand. And so we're able to spot this. You know, I had this problem as a CISO, but we're able to spot this hole, which was I could protect those executives and key people at the company inside the four walls of the company, every single thing out here on the show floor known to mankind. But I could not protect them in their personal lives. And that really created a chance and an opportunity for something to sprout, something to grow. And as you guys know, you're one of the first phone calls, as you guys know, that was BlackCloak.
[00:03:03] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, we were having a coffee in Santa Monica.
[00:03:06] Chris Pierson: I
[00:03:06] Marco Ciappelli: still remember that. That's, I still remember that day, and yeah, it's unbelievable. We have known each other before that. So what you just said is the typical, you know, the company that succeeds because the founder sees a problem nobody's resolving. You have believed that throughout your career, and then you work really hard to get to where we are today, and you have a very successful, I mean, BlackCloak, it's very successful right now, right?
[00:03:35] Chris Pierson: It's huge. And it's, you know, you have to be able to spot, you want to go where there's an undefended beachhead, right? You want to go somewhere where no one else is necessarily and be able to predict that ahead of time. You don't wanna go too early. Yeah. It's like Uber, very successful because great idea and GPS technology enabled in every single person's hands, right time, right place.
[00:03:58] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah.
[00:03:58] Chris Pierson: And so what you want to do is be able to time that idea with the market and be able to take advantage of it. We're able to do that. I will say the one thing, and I know you know, 'cause you've met so many of the fine people here as part of the BlackCloak team over the years. Oh man.
[00:04:11] Marco Ciappelli: Great team.
[00:04:12] Chris Pierson: It is, it is. You know. It is. Yes. Founder-led and driven and all the rest, and technology, but you have to bring some amazing, amazing people. I think you've talked to Matt Covington. Yeah. Our SVP of Product, and other folks at our organization. Yeah. But you gotta bring around you and assemble around you a team that is second to none, and that's what we've done here, and it's magic. I love our team. I mean, we got the Inc. Best Workplaces award again this year. And the prior year. I mean, you have to really make a conducive environment by which people will thrive and love what they're doing. And I'm just privileged to be here.
[00:04:49] Marco Ciappelli: Throughout the years that we've been working together, you know, I remember you were making the joke, you're talking to the marketing guy, the CEO, the CISO, the product development. And I know it's true, 'cause that's how you, you know, that's as the top. But now you have this team. And you always had this concept of concierge, white gloves, because you're dealing with people that expect that. Yeah. And you are there. I mean, if they don't trust you, the whole concept is gone. And by you, I mean you and every single person that works on the team.
[00:05:20] Chris Pierson: Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm very lucky, very blessed to have a great CISO community of friends that are out there. And, you know, that's really some of the easy pathways that we had early on in terms of, we have some good intros, good friends from that community. But it is, it's built off of trust, built off our reputation, and that's to our benefit.
[00:05:39] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah.
[00:05:39] Chris Pierson: Yeah.
[00:05:39] Marco Ciappelli: All right. Let's get to today here at Black Hat. I know you had some announcements. I know that the circle of trust expanded. So what's going on there? I think you got an app and all of that.
[00:05:54] Chris Pierson: Yeah, so I think what's really, really cool is this. We have continued to see over the years people try to take advantage of key persons at companies, usually CFO, CRO, or CHRO, CEO. But people that are in positions of power that have access to finances, money, human resource records, intellectual property. And that's only accelerated with the advent of deepfakes, right? This is not something where it's like George Lucas in a back room, 30 supercomputers, and it takes six months to do. Well, you remember, right? Like that Brad Pitt on Tom Cruise's face?
[00:06:28] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah.
[00:06:29] Chris Pierson: This is now something where you're able to do it on a computer, a Chromebook or whatever, on a computer, and you're able to do it in three minutes. Real live time video as well as the audio, based off of small sample sets. And we saw this first really come into market in February of 2024, right? CFO was impersonated, $25 million wire transfer went out the door, and it keeps on going from there. We've seen the technology increase. We've seen the adversaries use AI more to create better deepfakes, and all your information is out there. And so BlackCloak launched Impersonation Protection several months ago, but we were really focused on protecting the key group of individuals, the C-suite family, the executive and the families. We got asked and challenged by our clients that are, all right, loving Impersonation Protection. How can you go further to my circle? How can you go ahead and make sure, right, the person that's, that's who, my trusts and estates, private wealth management, the lawyer, the spiritual advisor, the dog walker. My personal
[00:07:30] Marco Ciappelli: Real estate.
[00:07:31] Chris Pierson: Yeah, personal. Those people that I, the CEO, CFO, whomever, I surround myself with, as well as that my wife and kids surround themselves with. And this has made the platform more extensible. BlackCloak can now cover 500, a thousand, 5,000, 50,000 individuals at a company for Impersonation Protection, and all of their family members and all of their key contacts, those people over the circle. So it really does stop the deepfakes where they start, which is targeting the human. And that's a big, big thing here.
[00:08:06] Marco Ciappelli: You know, it's impressive, because this is something that everybody should have, right? I mean, I do podcasts. I don't even know how many I have done, like a thousand. I mean, my voice is out there. I have video. My face is out there. First thing I told my mom back in the day is if you get a call that says it's me, you call me.
[00:08:24] Chris Pierson: That's right.
[00:08:25] Marco Ciappelli: Or my, you know, and I'll let you know if that was really me asking for money or whatever or anything like that. So it's a problem for everybody, but of course it's a numbers game. But when you are on a certain level,
[00:08:38] Chris Pierson: yeah,
[00:08:38] Marco Ciappelli: then you are a target. You are a real target.
[00:08:40] Chris Pierson: Look at the leadership page of every website. Ten board of directors, 10 C-suite, 10-person executive leadership team, whatever. Those 30 people, 50, a hundred people out there are massively targeted. And you said, Mom, like, what? Your parents, our parents, my parents, all of our parents, they're susceptible. They're at that age where they're susceptible. They're not gonna know the difference. We have to do something there. The circle of trust extends out that license for free, right? This is not about making money on the folks that are out there. This extends it out there because we have those companies, we have those executives that are already with us at BlackCloak as part of the platform.
[00:09:18] Marco Ciappelli: Tell me, you mentioned the recognition that you had again this year as a growing company, fast-growing company. Walk back again, and then we go into the future, in the last 12 years.
[00:09:31] Chris Pierson: Yeah,
[00:09:32] Marco Ciappelli: all that happened. I mean, 12 months. Sorry. I was about to say 12
[00:09:35] Chris Pierson: years. Whoa.
[00:09:36] Marco Ciappelli: I'm gonna edit that. No, I'm gonna leave it. No, leave it in. Yeah. 12 months.
[00:09:40] Chris Pierson: 12 months. Yeah. I mean, look, over the past year, just a lot has happened. A few different key things. Number one, at the end of 2024 and into the beginning of 2025, tragically, we had the murder of Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare CEO. This has really ushered forward opportunity in terms of what do you see in terms of convergence of physical security, executive protection, and digital executive protection. How do you think about these two things together? The fact of the matter is that your digital breadcrumbs are out there. They're on data broker websites. They're on the deep web, dark web, which you can never, ever erase. So you have to move to protection mode. You can't remove it, you gotta protect. But how can we bring together things like travel alerts? You land in Italy for the Olympics, and you're one of the sponsors of the Olympics. What is the travel advisory for Italy? What are the hotspots? Where's the consulate information? Being able to deliver that in live real time. How do you think about delivering value to the CISO in terms of a dashboard that shows all the world threats at your fingertip, and you can go ahead and add in cybersecurity advice and guidance for the trip to the Chinese manufacturing facilities? How do you think about that? So this convergence was one of the biggest, biggest areas of opportunity for BlackCloak. Luckily, we have the trusted relationship, but as a result, our members are able to see travel advisories. The CISOs can go ahead and procure those individually through our platform and our dashboard. We're able to go ahead and do global alerts and alerting, and then bring the cybersecurity, which we always do, through the platform with it. So that's probably the biggest thing. The second thing is the advent of the unified platform. The unified platform of BlackCloak means that from an engineering perspective, we have three different items that really form the foundation of BlackCloak. The first is gonna be our Providence threat intelligence system. Our own curated, built-from-the-ground-up intelligence system that is targeting executives and our family members. We grab the data, analyze and assess the data, do the digital risk scores for them and their families. The second part is Mission Control. It's gonna be our internal SIEM. So how do we go ahead and allow for the protection without using third-party tools? And then finally, how do we go ahead and actually protect people, which people see as the physical manifestation of the BlackCloak app on their cell phone, tablet, computer, personal devices. And so I think the convergence of physical and cyber, huge. I think the platformization, a unified platform, this is a one-stop shop, whether you're a CSO or a CISO. We're gonna take care of you, your executives, and their family members. Really, quite honestly, whoever you think is the key person at your company, and be able to protect their digital life. And then the final thing is really magic. For the past eight years, BlackCloak has exceedingly impressive, unique data on our individuals, on our members. This data we're able to use to harness what should we be protecting, what should we be thinking about, where are the threats coming from. I'll give you an example. We run one of the largest deception networks, a honeypot,
[00:12:54] Marco Ciappelli: yeah,
[00:12:54] Chris Pierson: that is out there for individuals in the world. It's on every single one of our clients' computers, so it travels all over with them. This data allows us to think about where are the executive airports being targeted, was the Olympics targeted, what was the targeting we saw at the World Cup, and really focus our controls and protections and allow for that relationship to pervade with the CISO. I mean, really amazing, unique data.
[00:13:19] Marco Ciappelli: It's incredible. I mean, from the idea, from the initial idea, to getting to make it very easy. 'Cause that's key, right? You don't want to go into this company or families and say, hey, from now on, we're gonna revolutionize everything, we're gonna make everything three steps. Now this is happening frictionless. Yeah. Frictionless. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And that's because, as you said, the technology's allowing this. You guys are on top of that. And you know, to close, it's what's happening in society. Society is a hybrid way of living now. It's not the digital world, like fantasy land. No, we live online. We live on our computer, on our phone, we travel, and it's just incredible what you've been able to do.
[00:14:07] Chris Pierson: You gotta meet people, you gotta meet people where they're at. Yeah. You gotta meet people where they're at. So, yeah.
[00:14:11] Marco Ciappelli: Hey, it was so good to see you again. It's always a pleasure.
[00:14:14] Chris Pierson: Oh, pleasure.
[00:14:14] Marco Ciappelli: And for everybody else, we've been creating a few more pieces of content with BlackCloak, even a little demo of how all of this happens, how you control if it is you or someone else, or a computer at all. And so I invite you to check it out on YouTube, on our channel, and get in touch, get in touch with this amazing team, and stay protected. All right?
[00:14:44] Chris Pierson: Absolutely.
[00:14:45] Marco Ciappelli: Thank you everybody.