TLDR
- Over half of executives polled by Deloitte expect to see an increase in the number and size of deepfake financial fraud over the next 12 months.
- A quarter said their companies already experienced at least one such attack.
- About 10% said their companies are not doing anything to guard against deepfake financial fraud, while 20% have “no confidence” that their organizations can respond effectively to these attacks.
Corporate executives are getting increasingly concerned about the rise of deepfake financial fraud, with 51.6% of C-suite and senior executives expecting a rise in the number and size of these attacks over the next 12 months, according to a recent poll by Deloitte.
Deepfake financial fraud is a type of cyberattack that uses AI to create fake images, videos or audio recordings to trick people into transferring money or data to criminals.
For example, a finance worker in Hong Kong reportedly was tricked into sending $25.6 million to a criminal after he attended a video call where a deepfake of the firm’s CFO – along with other deepfake colleagues – told him to make the transfer.
The poll revealed that about a quarter of those surveyed had already experienced at least one deepfake financial attack against their organizations’ financial and accounting data. Not surprisingly, executives whose companies have already been victimized are more likely to see more attacks coming.
Preventive measures being taken include increasing employees’ education about new threats (30%) and establishing new policies and procedures to help the workforce prepare for these attacks (25%).
However, few are using detection technologies as the main line of defense. About 10% of respondents say their companies are doing nothing to guard against deepfake fraud, and 20% say they have “no confidence” in their companies’ ability to respond to these attacks effectively.
“Deepfake financial fraud is rising, with bad actors increasingly leveraging illicit synthetic information like falsified invoices and customer service interactions to access sensitive financial data and even manipulate organizations’ AI models to wreak havoc on financial reports,” said Mike Weil, Deloitte’s digital forensics leader.
Deloitte polled more than 1,100 C-suite and other executives in May 2024 and released the results in September.
