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For decades, executive security followed a familiar playbook: Most CEOs traveled freely at home, accepted protection only in high-risk foreign countries, and treated personal safety as a private concern rather than a boardroom imperative.

Mentions of exec security protocols are popping up in more proxy filings, and companies like Starbucks are changing corporate jet policies due to what it calls "significant heightened security concerns."

These moves follow the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City and a shooting at a Park Avenue office building about eight months later.

Both instances shattered long-held assumptions that corporate leaders were at least somewhat insulated from the types of violence more often associated with politicians or celebrities, several security executives told Business Insider.

There isn't a distinction between low-, medium-, or high-risk anymore, said Dale Buckner, head of the security firm Global Guardian, which works with Fortune 1000 companies.

The news of the disappearance of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie's mother, Nancy, has only added to a sense of unease for high-profile leaders, several of these execs said.

Buckner, a retired US Army colonel who served for more than two decades, said his firm has briefed more boards in the past 11 months than in the previous 14 years combined. Increasingly, Buckner said, boards view CEOs and other C-suite members as assets that must be protected, even if some leaders are leery of perceived constraints on their freedom.

"The board is overruling the CEO who is going, 'I don't need this,'" he said.