The rise of deepfakes: The new frontier in business fraud

The rise of deepfakes: The new frontier in business fraud

In a world where the lines between reality and illusion are blurred more than ever, one cannot help but wonder how we can discern the genuine from the fake? Imagine receiving a message from your boss, asking you to transfer a huge sum of money, in her familiar voice only to later discover that it was a very meticulously crafted deepfake. This is not just in the realm of dystopian fiction anymore but more of a looming reality. 

Deepfakes are getting more convincing as each day goes by and a recent study found that humans cannot reliably detect deepfakes. Scarily, increasing awareness does nothing to increase human detection capabilities. 

Real-world deepfake scams

• Recently, the British engineering firm, Arup, fell victim to a GBP 20 million deepfake scam, after an employee was duped into sending the money to fraudsters because of an AI generated video call. 

• The CEO of WPP also had a close call, with fraudsters impersonating him using fake text messages and publicly available footage from YouTube.

• Recently, a deepfake audio was able to mimic the distinctive Southern Italian accent of Ferrari’s CEO, targeting a thankfully suspicious Ferrari executive who was able to stop the scam before it unfolded. 

These deepfake videos and audios are made with widely available sources of information. CEOs with huge digital footprints including but not limited to conference footage, interviews and more, are prime targets. 

Protecting your business from deepfakes

Given the sophistication of modern deepfakes and the limitations of human detection, businesses need robust technological solutions to safeguard against these threats. If you're concerned about the potential impact of deepfakes on your organization, it's crucial to explore proactive measures. 

To learn more about a tool that can stop and detect deepfakes in real-time, book a demo with us.