In December 2018, Facebook evacuated its Menlo Park Campus because of a bomb threat that the police had received. The company confirmed that the buildings were evacuated and everyone was safe.
Receiving these kinds of threats really gets you to think about the security that you should be enforcing in top tech giants. If you look at the chart of the amount of money these companies spend to protect their executives you would be surprised. But in their defense, they have their reasons.
In 2021, Meta spent around $27 million to keep its CEO Mark Zuckerberg safe. Mark Zuckerberg’s cost for safety keeps going up every year for Meta. According to publicly available data, the cost to keep Zuckerberg safe is much higher than other tech company CEOs or executives.
“We believe that Mr. Zuckerberg’s role puts him in a unique position: he is synonymous with Meta and, as a result, negative sentiment regarding our company is directly associated with, and often transferred to, Mr. Zuckerberg.”
There was a 6% increase in the security cost of Facebook’s CEO compared to the year 2020. The security bill to keep him safe was evaluated at $26.8 million with $15.2 million spent on his personal protection and $10 million to keep his family. This doesn’t include the $1.6 million spent on using a private craft or personal travel. The cost of security also increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in market demand for security personnel.
Meta also paid $9 million excluding the $2.3 million of private aircraft for travel means for the security of COO Sheryl Sandberg. Not just Meta, but most tech giants spend a huge amount of money to keep their leaders safe which we can find out through public filings.
In 2018, Apple spent $310,000 on CEO, Tim Cook which is actually a very humble expenditure. Google spent $1.2 million and $4.3 million in 2018 and 2021 respectively, to keep CEO Sundar Pichai safe. On the other hand, the amount Amazon spends ($1.2 million) on Jeff Bezos’ security hasn’t changed since 2012. According to sources, Jeff Bezos pays for his personal security separately. Twitter paid $63.8k in 2021 to keep CEO Parag Agrawal safe. Finally, one of the biggest names of Silicon Valley, Elon Musk hasn’t disclosed the amount it spends on security.
You can clearly see the whopping difference between the amount spent by Meta and other tech companies for security purposes. This maybe because of the incident that was mentioned earlier.
Meta says in its SEC Filings that, “We believe that Mr. Zuckerberg’s role puts him in a unique position: he is synonymous with Meta and, as a result, negative sentiment regarding our company is directly associated with, and often transferred to, Mr. Zuckerberg.” Provided what goes in media about Facebook, the amount spent on Mark Zuckerberg seems to be appropriate. Mark Zuckerberg takes a $1 salary without any bonuses so it also makes sense for the company to spend so much on the CEO’s security.