Defuse

Prominent families and the advisers who protect them face a recurring problem: when someone’s behaviour becomes concerning, the security industry defaults to visible protective measures rather than answering the question that actually matters — what is this person likely to do next? Defuse Global was founded by Philip Grindell, a former Scotland Yard detective and the architect of Parliament’s threat assessment capability, to fill that gap. The firm provides behavioural threat oversight, not physical guarding, and works with family offices, private clients, lawyers, and strategic communications firms to assess whether a situation warrants action or reassurance.

The firm’s work covers several distinct situations that family offices encounter:

• Digital Exposure Assessments mapping what personal information is publicly accessible and how it could be used by someone with hostile intent
• Ongoing retainer-based behavioural threat oversight for principals and their families
• Stalker and fixated-person risk assessments, drawing on forensic psychology expertise from Dr Lorraine Sheridan, who completed Europe’s first PhD on stalking
• Insider threat and disgruntled employee assessments for family office structures
• Risk register development to capture, prioritise, and assign ownership of emerging threats

Defuse Global is structured deliberately as a small advisory practice, not a scaled security operation. That means direct access to experienced practitioners rather than junior analysts, but it also means capacity is finite. The firm serves an international client base, with testimony from a US-based family office CSO, though its operational base is in the United Kingdom. Pricing is not disclosed publicly. Buyers seeking a firm that will default to adding security spend rather than first assessing whether it is warranted will find Defuse Global’s approach deliberately counter to that instinct — which is precisely the point for family offices that want proportionate, evidence-led judgement over reactive escalation.