Cisco Talos Launches Dedicated Threat-Hunting Service for Executive Accounts

Cisco Talos has announced Executive Threat Detection (ETD), a new addition to its Incident Response retainer offerings designed to protect an organisation's most senior staff. The service responds to a rise in whaling attacks and highly targeted campaigns aimed squarely at executives rather than everyday employees.

Talos notes that executive accounts are especially valuable to attackers because they often have elevated access to financial data, intellectual property, and strategic plans. Executives also tend to have a wider digital footprint outside the corporate network, making them attractive targets for tailored social engineering and advanced persistent threats. Standard endpoint detection tools, tuned for average users across thousands of devices, can miss the subtle, slow-moving techniques used to compromise a senior leader.

ETD addresses this gap with monthly, human-led threat hunting carried out by Talos IR experts who become familiar with an organisation's executive environment, combined with Talos' threat intelligence. The aim is to detect signs of compromise in executive-linked accounts and devices before attackers can use them as a stepping stone into a wider breach.