Technology is not a back-office concern for family offices any longer, and these organizations must adapt accordingly.

This article stems from the recent cybersecurity forum hosted by Family Wealth Report in New York City. The author is Warren Finkel (main picture) of Omega Systems.

Family offices used to treat technology as a back-office concern. That's changed. Cybersecurity, AI adoption, infrastructure modernization, and operational resilience now sit at the center of business strategy, shaping how well a family protects assets, maintains trust, and operates through disruption.

That was the central message at the 2026 Family Wealth Report Cybersecurity Forum, where Omega Systems presented findings from its 2026 Outlook for Family Offices Industry Briefing. The briefing draws on Omega's 2025 Financial Services Cyber Resilience Survey of more than 300 financial services leaders, including family office executives and technology decision-makers; it reflects patterns the company sees regularly in its work with family offices across the country.

The office hasn't stayed the same, but the security has
Consider how secure connectivity has changed. A family office's operating environment today looks nothing like it did even a few years ago. Advisors work remotely. Executives travel frequently. Teams collaborate across locations, devices, and cloud platforms. Many of the security architectures protecting them, however, were built for a single office with a defined perimeter.

That mismatch is part of why Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Zero Trust models have gained ground across financial services. Rather than trusting a user because they're inside the network, these approaches continuously verify users, devices, and access privileges no matter where someone is working. For family offices, the appeal isn't just better network security. It's a foundation flexible enough to support mobility, cloud adoption, and outside collaboration as those needs keep evolving.

Confidence hasn't caught up to concern
The survey data points to a gap between what family offices recognize and what they're prepared to handle. Seventy-two per cent of family office respondents believe they're targeted more frequently because they manage high net worth assets and sensitive financial information. Eighty-three per cent are concerned about deepfakes and other AI-powered impersonation attempts aimed at executives, advisors, and trusted contacts.

Yet only 60 per cent said they were confident in their employees' ability to detect and prevent AI-powered attacks – a figure that trails both the broader financial services industry and RIA firms. Awareness is high, but readiness lags it.

That gap matters because resilience isn't only about keeping attacks out. It's about what happens after one gets in. Sixty-seven per cent of family office respondents said legacy systems and outdated infrastructure would slow their recovery from a cyber incident, and 78 per cent said a successful attack could trigger reputational damage, investor concern, or withdrawals. A cybersecurity incident rarely stays a technology problem for long. It becomes a question of relationships and confidence.

AI Is already in the building
AI came up repeatedly at the forum, and for good reason. Financial services firms are already using AI tools to accelerate research, summarize information, and improve productivity, so lean family office teams stand to gain the most from that kind of leverage.

The risk is that adoption is outpacing governance. Employees are folding AI tools into daily workflows well before most organizations have settled on approved platforms or rules for handling sensitive information. For a family office managing confidential investor data and proprietary investment strategies, that's not a minor gap to leave open.

AI is reshaping the threat side of the ledger too. Deepfake impersonation, AI-generated phishing, and more convincing social engineering are showing up more often, and they don't fit neatly into security playbooks written before generative AI existed.

The takeaway isn't slowing down AI adoption. It's to govern it proactively and intentionally – approving specific platforms, setting clear rules for what can and can't be shared with AI tools, and keeping a human in the loop on anything AI produces.

Fewer tools, tighter operations
A common thread runs through these conversations: family offices want less complexity, not more technology. Many are moving away from a patchwork of disconnected IT and security tools toward something more unified, where identity security, endpoint protection, monitoring, and user support all operate under one strategy instead of several.

That consolidation tends to pay off in adaptability. When the underlying systems are standardized, a family office can respond to a new regulation, a new threat, or a new business need without untangling five vendor relationships first.

What sets the leaders apart in 2026
The family offices that come out ahead this year won't be the ones with the biggest technology budgets. They'll be the ones that paired smart AI adoption with real governance, and that treated infrastructure modernization as a deliberate decision rather than something to defer.

The risks family offices face are evolving quickly, but so is the opportunity to get ahead of them. A security-first approach to modernization gives these organizations room to take advantage of new technology without losing the trust that's always been the real asset under management.

About the author

As MD of Omega Systems' Northeast Region, Warren Finkel has decades of experience and deep-rooted relationships within the financial services sector. He founded ACE IT Solutions, which he led and founded for 14 years. The business was acquired by Omega in 2022. Finkel has cultivated a reputation for delivering bespoke IT solutions to family offices, private equity firms, hedge funds, RIAs, and alternative asset firms.