Deepfake Defense Strategy

Attackers are using AI to clone your CEO's voice and face. The era of "seeing is believing" is over. Here is how to verify reality.

The Threat: CEO Fraud 2.0

In 2024, a finance worker in Hong Kong paid out $25 million after a video conference call with their CFO.

The catch? The CFO and everyone else on the call were deepfakes.

Types of Attacks

• Voice Cloning: Requires only 3 seconds of audio to clone a person's voice. Used for vishing (voice phishing) attacks.
• Real-time Face Swapping: Used in video calls to impersonate executives or IT support staff.

Defense Strategies

1. The "Challenge" Protocol

Establish a "challenge-response" protocol for high-value transactions. If the CEO asks for a wire transfer, ask a challenge question that only they would know, or use a secondary channel (Signal, SMS) to verify.

2. Watermarking & C2PA

Adopt the C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) standard. This adds a cryptographic signature to media files, proving their origin.

3. Liveness Detection

Use identity verification tools that perform "liveness checks" (e.g., asking the user to turn their head or read a random number) to distinguish between a real person and a screen/mask.