Crime Is Down. So Why Is Every Fortune 500 Company Suddenly Hiring Protection?
Here's a number that should stop you: nearly 40% of S&P 500 companies are now funding executive protection programs, and their median spend has more than doubled since 2019. Meanwhile, violent crime actually fell over 9% last year.
Something doesn't add up, until you realize crime rate and risk exposure are two different problems. One is statistical. The other is what happens the one time it happens to you.
CNBC recently ran a deep dive into the private security industry, riding along with Allied Universal's guard and K-9 operations to unpack why corporate America is pouring billions into protection at a moment when the overall numbers look better, not worse. We watched it. Here's what it confirms about where this industry is headed — and why "good enough" security isn't going to cut it much longer.
The Threat Isn't Statistical. It's Reputational and Legal.
A surge in the national crime rate is not required to justify a protection program. Just one headline-making incident is sufficient.
The CNBC report presents a list that every risk manager is familiar with: a Fortune 500 CEO murdered in Manhattan during daylight, a shooter in a Midtown office building, or a Molotov cocktail thrown at a tech CEO's entrance. Each of these events not only made headlines but also changed how courts and insurers now perceive what is foreseeable.
The term "foreseeable" carries more weight than many people understand. Once a type of attack is classified as foreseeable, a standard of care becomes necessary. This standard of care results in liability, which subsequently affects insurance requirements. These requirements explain why postponing security considerations has evolved into a legal risk, not merely an operational one.
Translation: By the time an incident impacts your organization, the standards against which you will be assessed have already been established by someone else's unfortunate experience.
Scale Tells the Real Story
A few numbers from the report are worth sitting with:
The U.S. private security industry cracked $50 billion in revenue in 2025 — up 17% in a decade.
There are now close to 1.3 million security guards working in the U.S., nearly double the number of sworn police and sheriff's patrol officers.
Half of security leaders surveyed reported budget increases averaging 12% year over year.
Private security isn't a side industry propping up law enforcement anymore. By headcount, it's bigger. And the money is following the risk, not the crime rate.
The Gap Nobody's Talking About: Who's Actually Standing Post
This is where the CNBC article gained our respect; it did not gloss over the labor issues.
The typical security officer in this country earns about $18.70 per hour. In 2024, the industry's annual turnover reached 89%, which is significantly higher than the private-sector average. This indicates that those who are likely to be the first responders when incidents occur are, on average, the least experienced they have ever been, while being tasked with more responsibility and less training.
This gap is crucial. A guard uniform and a bag-check do not equate to executive protection. Genuine protective work, such as assessing a room before issues arise, managing exit strategies, conducting advance work on a venue, and de-escalating situations before they make headlines, requires trained skills rather than just a job description that can be filled quickly.
This is the line we've built our entire training programs around. Certificates don't stop threats. Reps do.
AI Can Watch a Camera Feed. It Can't Read a Room.
The report also addressed the role of technology, including surveillance networks, drone detection, remote monitoring, and AI-driven analytics. These are all valuable tools, but none can substitute for a trained human being.
Security is primarily about people handling others' poor decisions as they happen. No algorithm can de-escalate a confrontation, manage an evacuation, or make the immediate decision to move a principal out of a room. Technology enhances the visibility of a protection team, but it cannot replace the actions a protection team can take.
What This Means If You're Responsible for Anyone's Safety
If you operate a company, oversee a public-facing executive, or organize events where risk and crowds meet, the trend outlined in this report is clear: the standards for "reasonable" security are continually increasing, and this increase is outpacing most current plans. Delaying investment until an incident occurs is no longer a viable strategy; it has become a liability with potential negative publicity.
Effective protection begins prior to any threats, involving a thorough threat assessment, a well-defined protective strategy, and a team that is properly trained for the task rather than simply appearing to be prepared.
Quick Answers
Why are companies increasing security spend if crime is going down? Because risk exposure and crime statistics aren't the same thing. High-profile attacks on executives and public figures have shifted what courts and insurers legally consider foreseeable, raising the standard of care companies are held to regardless of national crime trends.
What's the difference between a security guard and executive protection? A security guard typically monitors a fixed location or checks credentials. Executive protection is a trained discipline covering threat assessment, secure travel, advance work, and real-time decision-making around a specific person or event it requires a different level of training entirely.
Can AI or surveillance technology replace human security personnel? No. Technology like cameras, drone detection, and analytics extends visibility, but security incidents are caused by people and resolved by trained human judgment.
De-escalation, evacuation decisions, and protective movement can't be automated.
Offshore Kinetics provides risk mitigation, training, and consulting. We build protection programs and train the people who run them. Our course curricula cover threat and vulnerability assessments, executive risk mitigation, secure travel consulting, and field-tested protective skills training.
Reference: CNBC's report on the private security industry, "Inside the Private Security Industry"
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