Deepfake Attacks: The Growing Threat to Enterprise Security

Deepfake attacks are exploding, and your company is probably not ready. In this episode of The Backup Wrap-up, we dive into how cybercriminals are using AI to clone voices and create fake videos to authorize fraudulent wire transfers and reset credentials. With nearly 50% of businesses already experiencing deepfake attacks, this isn't a future problem – it's happening right now. We break down the two main attack vectors: authorization fraud (where fake CEOs trick employees into wiring money) and credential theft (where attackers reset passwords and MFA tokens). More importantly, we give you actionable defense strategies: multi-channel verification protocols, callback procedures for sensitive transactions, employee training programs, and break-glass scenarios. You'll learn what not to rely on (spoiler: caller ID is worthless) and why policy and procedure matter more than technology alone. This is a must-listen for anyone responsible for security or financial controls.
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Speaker:backup recovery and cyber recovery.
Speaker:In this episode we're talking about.
Speaker:Deep fake attacks.
Speaker:Trust me, it's way scarier than you think.
Speaker:Prasanna and I break down how attackers are using ai, uh, to clone voices and
Speaker:create fake videos of CEOs and CFOs.
Speaker:They only need 30 seconds by the way of a, of a voice to impersonate someone.
Speaker:We cover the different types of attacks from wire fraud to credential theft, and
Speaker:also give you practical steps that you can take right now to defend against this.
Speaker:We talk about also how to set up procedures that won't get overridden.
Speaker:When someone says they're having an emergency, nearly half of
Speaker:all businesses have already been hit by deep fake phone calls.
Speaker:Listen in before you become the next victim.
Speaker:By the way, if you don't know who I am, I'm w Curtis Preston,
Speaker:AKA, Mr. Backup, and I've been passionate about backup and recovery.
Speaker:Ever since I had to tell my boss that we had no backups of the production
Speaker:database that we had just lost.
Speaker:I don't want that to happen to you, and that's why I do this.
Speaker:On this podcast, we turn unappreciated admins into Cyber Recovery Heroes.
Speaker:This is the backup wrap up pop.
Speaker:Welcome to the show.
Speaker:Hi, I am w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr. Backup, and I have a guy with me who
Speaker:continues to allow me to change the design of a project that I have going on.
Speaker:And so it's all his fault.
Speaker:Prasanna Malaiyandi, How's it going, Prasanna
Speaker:I am good, but I just, just to make sure everyone
Speaker:Uhhuh.
Speaker:I had initially suggested this design to you.
Speaker:And you poo-pooed on the idea and now you're walking back after you've
Speaker:done additional investigation.
Speaker:well, you know,
Speaker:like your first design was solid
Speaker:yeah,
Speaker:because there's sort of the difference between like a
Speaker:design and what is practical.
Speaker:And what, and what doesn't cost a million dollars.
Speaker:$1 billion.
Speaker:uh, and I, I don't want to go into detail right now because it may
Speaker:be, it may just be insanity, and I may, you know, this, this idea, um.
Speaker:You know, and
Speaker:We'll see how it
Speaker:we'll see how it goes and, um, you know, but, uh, but yeah, I just keep,
Speaker:I keep, I haven't pulled the trigger on the design and I keep changing the gun.
Speaker:But, but at least it's not like you're swapping out a car for
Speaker:a boat or an airplane, right.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:like, oh, do I want a car versus do I want four door
Speaker:Do I?
Speaker:a coupe?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's sort of the thing.
Speaker:You're at
Speaker:Or do.
Speaker:it down.
Speaker:Or do I want a pick up or do I want, or
Speaker:I don't know if it's quite at the pickup level.
Speaker:I think you're beyond the, like, is it an SUV?
Speaker:Is it a car,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:you're beyond that.
Speaker:I think you're now
Speaker:But I'm like, do I want 19 inch wheels?
Speaker:Do I want plastic wheels?
Speaker:Do we want
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:run flats?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Nice analogy.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:See, you're not as, it's not as, uh, bad as
Speaker:It's just that every time I think I've got it sorted out, I come up
Speaker:with a problem with my current design.
Speaker:Yes, and so all you have to do is just stop talking to me.
Speaker:Honestly, if you just stop talking to me, I bet you can
Speaker:like quickly narrow down your
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:should talk to me after it's done, after it's
Speaker:No, I can't do that.
Speaker:You're on my everything advisor, you know, that.
Speaker:Um, I just wanna say, I just wanna say to the audience, we've often mentioned
Speaker:that Prasanna has this like, uh, this ridiculous level of random knowledge.
Speaker:Today.
Speaker:I'm talking to Prasanna and he's like, so yeah.
Speaker:So I think the, the flow rate of a garden hose is like one to one
Speaker:and a half gallons an hour, and.
Speaker:And I was just like, like, why do you know that?
Speaker:Also, I was significantly
Speaker:Oh, were you, were you?
Speaker:So it depends on the size of a pipe, they say it could be between five and eight.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So, okay, so in this case you thought you knew something,
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:But I did clarify and say I think that might be low just given that
Speaker:bathroom faucets are like one to one and a half gallon per minute.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, uh, we're not gonna talk about that stuff at all.
Speaker:We're gonna talk about
Speaker:deep fake attacks.
Speaker:Um, and this is a real problem.
Speaker:You sent me a great article that started this whole thing.
Speaker:Uh, yeah, from the register and the title, we'll put, we'll put the link in here.
Speaker:Uh, and the, the saying from Gartner, they're saying nearly
Speaker:half of businesses suffered deep fake phone calls against the staff.
Speaker:Um, so do you want to, you wanna just give an overview of
Speaker:what we're talking about here?
Speaker:Yeah, sure.
Speaker:So with the prevalence of AI and all these models being amazing and being
Speaker:able to generate video and photos, aspect is being able to generate audio.
Speaker:so now these AI models are really good at taking someone's voice.
Speaker:And being able to mimic it such that an attacker can make it sound
Speaker:like you are talking the same way as the person that they're trying to
Speaker:Right, right.
Speaker:imitate.
Speaker:And the quality has gotten so good that it's pretty difficult to differentiate
Speaker:between the real person and the deep fake.
Speaker:Especially if you don't know the real person.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So like if you, if you don't know them personally, I, I think I would
Speaker:like with you, I think I would pretty readily notice a deep fake, right.
Speaker:Well, first off, I would ask the deep fake, some random piece of information.
Speaker:I'd be like,
Speaker:probably may not
Speaker:you know.
Speaker:a deepfake probably has that
Speaker:Oh, that's true.
Speaker:I, I'd be like, I'd be like the, the classic line and, um, what, what's
Speaker:the, what's the ignition timing on a four barrel carburetor on a 1968?
Speaker:Yeah, my cousin, my cousin Vinny.
Speaker:Um, it's a trick question.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:um, the, um,
Speaker:So, so there is so DeepFakes, right?
Speaker:We talked about use it also as pranks, right?
Speaker:And kids use it to be like, Hey, I am imitating someone else.
Speaker:Or, you call in sick from school and the school calls your parents
Speaker:and is like, where are you?
Speaker:And you can imitate your parents and be like, Hey, so-and-so's sick.
Speaker:He's not coming in today.
Speaker:Right, right,
Speaker:So there are sort of not so like critical reasons people use
Speaker:it, like for the fun aspects of
Speaker:right.
Speaker:but then there's also the malicious uses of this technology, which is
Speaker:kind of what this episode is about.
Speaker:And, and also there, so there's audio deep fakes and there's video deep fakes, right?
Speaker:Um, and it was interesting, again, that same article said that 36% of people, uh,
Speaker:had, had, had video deep fakes, and that 5%, uh, had, had caused a serious problem.
Speaker:So
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:go ahead.
Speaker:so, and just the point about that.
Speaker:Audio deep fakes are less costly today versus video
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I think in one of the articles I read, I can't remember if it was the
Speaker:registrar article, but like a video Deep deepfake, a really convincing
Speaker:one might cost millions of dollars.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Um, that number has probably significantly gone down with a lot of the new AI
Speaker:models that have been announced, but doing it real time is a little
Speaker:bit more difficult than doing sort of a pre-process, but doing audio
Speaker:is significantly easier than video.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And so and so it's, it's probably less, that makes it less likely to be there.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Uh, but, but it, we will talk about one particular type of attack that
Speaker:uses video deep fakes, where I think that it addresses that, the issue
Speaker:that you talked about right there.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, and, uh.
Speaker:And, and why would they do this?
Speaker:Why, why would somebody, you know, what, what are they attempting to do here?
Speaker:So they are basically trying to trick the company employee, right, specifically
Speaker:the employee, to do something.
Speaker:It might be to gain access to the corporate network by doing password
Speaker:resets, which is what we see a lot of, uh, scattered Spider currently
Speaker:doing for their attacks, where they're calling in pretending to be someone.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:and being like, Hey, wire the money over to this
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:rather than the one
Speaker:right.
Speaker:you.
Speaker:And now they just siphoned all your money and it's really hard to get it back
Speaker:I'd say that, that, that's sort of two broad categories.
Speaker:So I mean, the one giant category is basically get the employee to do something
Speaker:that they wouldn't have otherwise done.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And that the, the two big categories would be at one grant, somebody
Speaker:access to something, and two, grant them access to some money.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Send some money over.
Speaker:And by the way, wire fraud is very real.
Speaker:Wire fraud is very real.
Speaker:And once it's done, it's kind of done right.
Speaker:Um, and, uh, you know, once it's discovered, if the
Speaker:money's gone, the money's gone.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And there was a huge issue, and I think it's still a huge issue, where
Speaker:people would basically get so-called signing instructions or last minute
Speaker:wiring instructions from the broker and be like, wire it to this account.
Speaker:They'd wire it, and then it turns out the broker had been compromised,
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:had imitated them, sent out all these emails, and now had a bunch
Speaker:of money that people thought.
Speaker:Was like their down payment going to the person and turned out it
Speaker:was going to a criminal actor.
Speaker:right, right.
Speaker:Not good.
Speaker:Not good.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, so.
Speaker:Uh, first off,
Speaker:on business.
Speaker:yeah, focusing on businesses.
Speaker:But first off, I think the number one goal of this call is to just,
Speaker:if you don't know how big of a deal this is, this is a big deal.
Speaker:It's a big deal.
Speaker:Literally today, uh, there was one statistic that suggested
Speaker:that they thought that 30%.
Speaker:Um, you know, of enterprise fraud will be deep fake based by next year.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Um, and also realize that they only need 30 seconds of clear audio to
Speaker:be able to clone somebody's voice.
Speaker:Um, which is kind of a
Speaker:we're
Speaker:Yeah, we're screwed.
Speaker:Yeah, we're screwed.
Speaker:I guess one question is these people, they're cloning,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:usually the people in power, right?
Speaker:Meaning the CFO, right?
Speaker:The CEO, trying to get the employees, say the person in accounting to
Speaker:sign a check or to send money
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:And so these people.
Speaker:Usually have like public spotlights.
Speaker:They're the ones who you find on LinkedIn with the social
Speaker:right.
Speaker:the videos the company.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Trying to promote the company.
Speaker:Or they're giving talks at conferences, so it's not like, oh, they're just
Speaker:locked away and someone somehow goes and like, records their audio.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:right,
Speaker:uh, downloads their phone messages.
Speaker:Or their phone calls, right?
Speaker:It is, this data's already out there.
Speaker:It's not like it's hard to find.
Speaker:right, right.
Speaker:Let's talk about a couple of the different types of attacks.
Speaker:The, the, the worst one, I think and, and, and it's worst in terms of
Speaker:like the potential ramifications, but also in terms of, uh, it's so devious
Speaker:and that is that they create a very short video of the person in power.
Speaker:So this is like A-C-E-O-C-F-O, that type of person, someone with authority to.
Speaker:Authorize a wire transfer, and then they, uh, create a very short video
Speaker:that, that basically, um, mimics the thing that they want them to do.
Speaker:Then the video, as part of this video, it drops.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So they, they, so what that does is that, that addresses the problem that
Speaker:you were talking about, is it addresses the cost of making that video fake.
Speaker:It also completely removes the need to do real time video fake,
Speaker:which would be the thing that would be super, super expensive.
Speaker:So if they can get a video of the person and then, um, do that.
Speaker:And then, um, and then what they do is they're like, they drop the call
Speaker:and then they immediately switch to a alternate communication method,
Speaker:such as the easiest would be text.
Speaker:It's like, Hey, I was trying to call you and my internet dropped.
Speaker:And text now is the only thing.
Speaker:And because of, again, human nature, you felt you were just
Speaker:talking to the CEO and now you think you're still talking to the CEO.
Speaker:And here, here's a question.
Speaker:How easy is it to clone a phone number?
Speaker:Oh, super simple.
Speaker:Super simple.
Speaker:spoof.
Speaker:You can spoof a phone number and show, or it could, it
Speaker:doesn't even have to be the ceo.
Speaker:As an example.
Speaker:Say you were on a video
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:you claim that, oh, my video's poor.
Speaker:You drop back off, you hide your
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:You could still be doing the audio,
Speaker:you could.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:even have to go to text messages
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:voice call or other
Speaker:right.
Speaker:You just leverage the same
Speaker:Yeah, so you could use the same channel, but just drop the, drop the video, right?
Speaker:Um, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker:And I think that's what happened in the first time I heard about this attack
Speaker:was I think a company, the CEO joined and said, send out, uh, this vendor.
Speaker:I think it was like $25 million or something.
Speaker:it was, I think on a video call they were on where they got deep
Speaker:faked and then they basically sent it to these fraudulent people.
Speaker:Right, right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I, and, and, and again, you know, go back to once that happens,
Speaker:you're kind of screwed, right?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:and it's not like, uh, it's not like with a credit card where
Speaker:you can, uh, do a chargeback.
Speaker:Yeah, and the other thing to also mention here is.
Speaker:It's not like they're just going and saying, oh, I'm just
Speaker:gonna randomly target you.
Speaker:They might have already gained access into your systems.
Speaker:They might have already wandered around looking at, okay,
Speaker:who's the important people?
Speaker:Who's in accounting?
Speaker:What meetings are there?
Speaker:So they are already snooping, listening in on your conversations,
Speaker:looking at your emails, and so they know exactly where to attack, who
Speaker:to attack, and who to imPrasannate.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So, uh, that, so that's the one, that's one type.
Speaker:That's where they're trying to get, like, to authorize like some sort
Speaker:of invoice, some sort of payment.
Speaker:Uh, the other is the, basically trying to gain access to an account.
Speaker:So this is either reset a password or um, um, you know, resetting A MFA tokens.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, can you think of anything else that they would try there?
Speaker:I think those are the main
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But even there, I do wonder how much is really around the
Speaker:voice aspects and the deep
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:versus just the social engineering.
Speaker:Because I think in those scenarios, social engineering
Speaker:becomes more critical ex right?
Speaker:Uh, in terms of understanding all the things needed in order
Speaker:to be able to reset an account.
Speaker:It's not necessarily that the help desk person or the person on the other
Speaker:side knows your voice in particular.
Speaker:Well, yeah, again, again, you're not necessarily, that's why I was saying
Speaker:earlier in the call, it's not necessarily a voice that's known to the person,
Speaker:but they're calling into a help desk.
Speaker:But what you are doing is you're using a deep fake, uh, thing to you're, you're
Speaker:trying to sound generally like somebody.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But, uh, again, it kind of relies on you not knowing that person really
Speaker:well, because I think the, the, the nuances of how that person talks
Speaker:is they're going to be, I think, relatively obvious to someone.
Speaker:The point there again, is to reset something to reset
Speaker:MFA so that then you could.
Speaker:You know, do the MFA with with some other channel.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The other thing to also think about is there are still companies that
Speaker:use voice as an authentication,
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:And so now becomes a question, okay, if my voice is my password,
Speaker:Passport.
Speaker:Passport.
Speaker:If you're gonna quote the line, my voice is my passport.
Speaker:Verify me.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:so now that becomes an attack vector,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's now someone can mimic you and unlock the other person doesn't know
Speaker:what you are supposed to sound like, but you've unlocked the account
Speaker:because you've made a deep fake.
Speaker:That quote of course is from sneakers, one of my favorite movies ever.
Speaker:I need to go watch that again.
Speaker:I do wanna talk just a little bit about personal stuff and then jump
Speaker:into the company stuff, right?
Speaker:There are a couple things that you could do that, and they're,
Speaker:they're actually kind of similar.
Speaker:One is to, to create some sort of code word within the family.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Some sort of shared secret that only you and the other person knows and say,
Speaker:Hey, if I ever actually do call you and I say I'm on the roadside and I need you
Speaker:to wire me 500 bucks for a tow truck or whatever, I'm gonna say this code word.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Um, and you can also, if you don't have a shared code word, you can, you can
Speaker:reference like in you and I I, if, if this was happening right now, I would say, Hey.
Speaker:You know that thing that we were talking about earlier today, you know, and you
Speaker:can reference something that both, that only you and that person would know.
Speaker:But, but yes, and I think that becomes the key, is something that only you
Speaker:and that other person knows that hasn't been shared over a video, over text,
Speaker:over some other communication method
Speaker:It needs to be.
Speaker:Yeah, very much.
Speaker:Uh, that, and then also, and we're gonna get this to the company as well, is verify
Speaker:through an alternate channel, right?
Speaker:Um, is, is something other than, um, you know, call them back on
Speaker:the number that you know them on.
Speaker:Now, there are ways to get around that too, but in general, they're
Speaker:gonna be faking the number.
Speaker:And when you call the other person's actual number back, uh, it's not gonna,
Speaker:it's not gonna be the scam, right.
Speaker:And, and it's interesting that we are talking about this episode today.
Speaker:So this morning I sent an article to my
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:and, uh, for some reason the link was broken.
Speaker:It didn't show up properly in text, and it just showed up as an empty bubble.
Speaker:And she immediately calls me, she's like, did someone hack your phone?
Speaker:Because normally I don't send things like that.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:looked very weird.
Speaker:She was.
Speaker:Wanted to verify using a different channel to be like,
Speaker:Hey, is that really you or not?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So let's talk, let's talk about, uh, to go to the companies now, right?
Speaker:And because the first suggestion.
Speaker:Is the same as the, as The suggestion that we just made, right, is, uh, is
Speaker:to have multi-channel verification.
Speaker:So the, the, the real key here is they're calling you in over one channel, or
Speaker:they're contacting you via one channel.
Speaker:In this case, what we're talking about is audio deep fake.
Speaker:So they are calling you and they've called you over this one channel, and
Speaker:then they want you to do the thing.
Speaker:So the question is, you need to contact them back over another channel.
Speaker:Um, now I can think of like an attack against that.
Speaker:Do you know what that might be?
Speaker:Well, it's basically they've compromised all your channels,
Speaker:Well, that wa that wasn't the, yeah, that wasn't the attack I was thinking
Speaker:about, although I, I do know, you know,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:am aware of a situation where there was a company that.
Speaker:Had had that happen, right?
Speaker:They had, they had compromised all of the things.
Speaker:That's not gonna fix that.
Speaker:But in general, that's not the case.
Speaker:But, uh, what I was thinking was the usual case or the usual hacker, what
Speaker:they're gonna do is they're gonna try to create a sense of urgency.
Speaker:They're gonna say, oh, you, you know, I, I need to call you back on
Speaker:your, your phone number of record.
Speaker:Oh, well I had my phone's dead, whatever.
Speaker:You know, I can't, you know, I'm, I'm calling in on my friend's phone.
Speaker:Uh, I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to do the thing.
Speaker:They, they come up, I'm sure that they're well trained on how to, um,
Speaker:create that sense of urgency and, and that sense of exception of, here's why
Speaker:I'm doing it in this really weird way.
Speaker:So, a hundred percent agree and I have a story around this.
Speaker:I actually have a story for
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:so,
Speaker:The way you say that, it's like you think that's all I am is just a
Speaker:bunch of stories, but that's okay.
Speaker:you always have
Speaker:so many amazing
Speaker:stories from all your
Speaker:experience of being in the field.
Speaker:But I do have a
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:other day I was looking to switch my, uh.
Speaker:Internet plan and, uh, my contract was expiring, so I called in and
Speaker:placed an order online and I get a call back like a couple hours later.
Speaker:recognize the number.
Speaker:The person leaves a message and is like, Hey, this is Xfinity calling,
Speaker:uh, we're calling about your plan.
Speaker:We had an issue.
Speaker:Can you please call us back?
Speaker:We can't do this right now.
Speaker:You have to call in.
Speaker:They leave a number.
Speaker:Then they call like three or four other times, like in the next couple days.
Speaker:And then, uh, three days later they call in and I pick up the
Speaker:phone and I talk to the person.
Speaker:They're like, hi, this is Xfinity.
Speaker:Uh, we had an issue with your order and they had my name
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I'm like, oh, that's great.
Speaker:And I was like, uh, and then it dawned on me, I'm like, I don't
Speaker:even know if this is Xfinity.
Speaker:'cause there's a
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Garbage calls out
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:So I was like, can you please give me your number so I can call back and verify?
Speaker:And they've gotten really professional.
Speaker:They're like, oh yeah, we totally understand.
Speaker:This happens to a lot of people.
Speaker:Here's our one 800 number.
Speaker:Call us
Speaker:Uh,
Speaker:And then I looked at the number, I Google searched it, I couldn't find it.
Speaker:And Xfinity's normal list.
Speaker:And Xfinity has a customer security assurance
Speaker:Uhhuh.
Speaker:So I called 'em and I gave them the number, and they're like,
Speaker:yeah, that's not an Xfinity number.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right, but the person had a, the exact same script that Xfinity
Speaker:would say whenever they call
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:They had the exact same accent, everything else, calling from a local number.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:But it's
Speaker:You did the right thing.
Speaker:You, you did the, basically what we're talking about here, the multi-channel
Speaker:verification, calling back to a, I mean, in that case it's technically
Speaker:the same channel, but you're, you're calling back on a different phone number.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Um, and that's what you're doing here is the whole point of the, uh, the different
Speaker:ways that log in and secure those login.
Speaker:The whole point of that is to maintain that security.
Speaker:If they're then trying to circumvent that security, there could be a real reason.
Speaker:There could be a. Real person with a real scenario that's really down.
Speaker:If, if that, you know, and they're, and they're, and so they can't use
Speaker:the normal methods, that's where you really need to slow things down.
Speaker:That person on the other end, they may be, they may be having the worst day of their
Speaker:lives, but you need to slow things down and verify in every way that is possible.
Speaker:Uh, and that may indeed be very inconvenient for the
Speaker:person in question, right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The other thing too is hopefully this is part of your processes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:You have a process in place when something like this has to happen
Speaker:and someone's asking for this, right?
Speaker:There is, Hey, I need this approval.
Speaker:We have these alternate mechanisms that we do to verify so everyone's on the same
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:rather than it being like, oh, I don't know what to do,
Speaker:and everyone's frank, frantic.
Speaker:right.
Speaker:And, uh, so speaking of multi-channel, uh, the other thing is to ban personal
Speaker:messaging apps for official business.
Speaker:You, you're never gonna ban, you know, let's say signal forever.
Speaker:I, I, I don't know if you can ban signal, like, like technologically you think you
Speaker:can and like, like using a firewall rules.
Speaker:It's
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I don't think you can.
Speaker:Well, also it's, especially if it's going out over cell phone signals.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, but you can ban them for business use.
Speaker:And again, this goes back to a lot of this, you mentioned it just a minute ago.
Speaker:This is about policy and procedure.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:there's, there's a certain amount that you can do.
Speaker:Technologically, but in the end, what you need is regular training and policy
Speaker:and procedure that says we don't use personal messaging apps for business.
Speaker:And then when suddenly somebody is somehow contacting you via, you
Speaker:know, let, let's say, let's say they found out that you use signal.
Speaker:Like on your phone or something, and so suddenly someone is contacting
Speaker:you via signal on your phone.
Speaker:Well, that's a giant red flag right there.
Speaker:It's like, Hey, this is not, we don't use it for official business.
Speaker:Right, right.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:And so establishing these mechanisms is good.
Speaker:Now, you probably also need to have sort of a break class scenario,
Speaker:you do.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Uh, I could imagine the case, remember the derecho and how everything went down,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Scenarios like that, that you couldn't have think, thought about, right?
Speaker:There needs to be, okay, this is a documented procedure when we have
Speaker:to go outside the normal scope.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And that person should be well.
Speaker:You, you should regularly train on that procedure.
Speaker:And, uh, and that procedure, the more remote a person is,
Speaker:the more that procedure needs to be kind of ironclad, right?
Speaker:And, and you need to have.
Speaker:Scenarios for those scenarios, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Of like, okay, you know, a derecho hit.
Speaker:You know, if you get hurricanes all the time, you need to have a syn.
Speaker:You need to have a. A procedure that says, here's what we do in this scenario,
Speaker:and then whoever that is, that, that, that what, 'cause you don't know, you
Speaker:don't know if it's a, a deep fake or not.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Whoever it is.
Speaker:Well, you need to follow our special procedure and maybe that special
Speaker:procedure is we have this other phone number that you should have in your
Speaker:phone or you should have in your, you know, like you said, your break
Speaker:glass, you got your special, uh, thing that we gave you that you're
Speaker:supposed to store in your right front.
Speaker:Breast pocket.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I'm just making stuff up, but
Speaker:like embedded into your
Speaker:it's not,
Speaker:it.
Speaker:you need to, you need to embed the little chip on your arm.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, but yeah, you have that break glass procedure.
Speaker:Uh, I remember, um, when I was, when I ran it for a small organization,
Speaker:the volunteer, it was a volunteer position and, uh, the, the.
Speaker:Main person there really did not like the fact that they did not have root.
Speaker:And I was like, I will not do this if you have root.
Speaker:Like I will.
Speaker:I'm, I'm not here.
Speaker:Like, I'm just not interested in that.
Speaker:But what they did was we created a break glass procedure for that, which
Speaker:was, we had it in a special envelope that was sealed, that was in the safe.
Speaker:And if I was ever incapacitated, they could break that.
Speaker:But, uh, if that was ever the case, then obviously I had to change
Speaker:the root password and everything.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Going back to sort of the multi-channel verification, right?
Speaker:One thing is that you should also think about.
Speaker:For some sensitive procedures or processes, right?
Speaker:Sort of having a callback protocol that says, okay, when this happens, this
Speaker:is the mechanism we're going to do.
Speaker:As an example, if someone's like, Hey, I need to wire a hundred
Speaker:thousand dollars to someone, it's like, okay, that is a special case.
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Kind of like how we talked about break
Speaker:right.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:This is a special case.
Speaker:Here are the exact steps that are required, and here are the people you need
Speaker:to contact using this type of protocol to make sure that yes, this is legitimate.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And, and one of the big ones would be a big payment to a new vendor, right?
Speaker:That should set all sorts of, uh, set off all sorts of red flags, right?
Speaker:You're sending a hundred thousand dollars to a vendor that you've
Speaker:never done any business with before.
Speaker:Uh, and then, and for some reason the, the CFO is calling you about this payment.
Speaker:That should be like, that should, you know, even if it sounds so much like a
Speaker:CFO, that should set off, uh, you know.
Speaker:Or, or it should be like, Hey, you should talk to procurement to figure
Speaker:out, okay, when did the vendor get added?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And are they even aware of them?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, and I just wanna speak to something here.
Speaker:You need to have a conversation with these people who are, uh, you know,
Speaker:your, in your management chain, and you need to have a conversation in advance.
Speaker:Say, Hey, if you ever have a situation where it's triggering my,
Speaker:you know, um, what do you call it?
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:Uh, red flag.
Speaker:It's, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's triggering off my spidey sense, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker:And I then put the kibosh on the thing you're asking for.
Speaker:You need to not like yell at me.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:We need to agree in advance that if I put a stop to a large transaction or
Speaker:something like that, or I don't reset your MFA because you're trying to log
Speaker:in and then you, you know, you cannot.
Speaker:Then just use your position to say, just do it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, because that, that's exactly what a, a threat actor would do, you know?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you've established these processes ahead
Speaker:Right, right,
Speaker:and so you should be following it as a company.
Speaker:right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And kind of along that line of sort of the processes, procedures, callback protocol,
Speaker:It's really important that employees get
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right and periodic training because this landscape is changing.
Speaker:How people are attacking with DeepFakes is constantly evolving.
Speaker:What are the new attacks is also changing on literally a day by day basis.
Speaker:And it's interesting 'cause Curtis, I don't, I know in the past, like we both
Speaker:have done sort of security training.
Speaker:I don't think I've ever run across deep fake training in those lessons.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Yeah, and
Speaker:Well, I mean, if you think about it was the last time, well, at least for me,
Speaker:the last time I was working for a company that was doing that kind of training.
Speaker:It was before Deepak was a thing, but yeah,
Speaker:but hopefully companies are now updating their trainings to include
Speaker:DeepFakes, maybe you should just periodically do a deepfake training or
Speaker:just have someone pretend to be a deep fake, join a video conferencing call
Speaker:yeah, yeah.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:see how people react.
Speaker:wonder, uh, like, no.
Speaker:Before, I wonder if, uh, if they've updated their stuff to a clay,
Speaker:they've got to at this point.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:And along with those employee trainings is also, include this
Speaker:in your tabletop exercises,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Just like we've talked about ransomware preparation.
Speaker:I think that you must include deep, fake exercises to figure out, and
Speaker:especially with people from finance and accounting who maybe normally
Speaker:are not part of your tabletop
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It's important that they now have this focus training to
Speaker:make sure they understand the scenarios and the situations.
Speaker:Um, and there are, so I think policy and procedure is the big tool here, right?
Speaker:Having said that, there is also starting to be detection tools right now.
Speaker:This will be for the rest of our lives.
Speaker:This will be an arms race, right, where we will have tools that detect ai.
Speaker:Right now, it's relatively easy if you know what to look for to
Speaker:detect an AI video or an AI audio.
Speaker:If you know what to look for
Speaker:ai?
Speaker:you.
Speaker:I don't think anybody could really do you as ai, but um.
Speaker:But there are tools right there, there is software that could do real
Speaker:time AI detection, and they look at things like how the voice sounds,
Speaker:they look at the cadence of the voice.
Speaker:They look at, uh, if it's video, they're looking at eye movement and you know, and
Speaker:also like, uh, biometric watermarking.
Speaker:There, there's all sorts of things, especially for high risk
Speaker:people or high risk industries.
Speaker:Um, and uh, and then also there, there's enhanced.
Speaker:Things, you know, enhanced security measures like liveness detection
Speaker:on multifactor authentication.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Voice, voice biometric systems.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:That, that can actually detect that the, the voice that they're
Speaker:listening to is synthetic.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:also along those lines, there are now regulations coming out trying to
Speaker:target sort of AI generated content.
Speaker:So if you look at things like Facebook videos, if they are generated using
Speaker:ai, I believe it now has to be tagged.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And so there is sort of that awareness that AI is getting so good that
Speaker:it's hard to differentiate, so it requires this additional tagging and
Speaker:information to be able to help users discern AI versus a real person.
Speaker:So there is technology.
Speaker:So just, just search and, and keep yourself up to date on
Speaker:deepfake detection technology.
Speaker:It's going to be an arms race.
Speaker:This is gonna be fun, right?
Speaker:Um, so let, let's talk about some things not to rely on.
Speaker:Caller id.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Caller Id don't mean jack squat, right?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Um, and also, uh, if you have voice recognition systems, if you don't
Speaker:have additional authentication on top of that voice recognition.
Speaker:Um, same thing with video calls.
Speaker:And again, this, this urgent when, when it's like super urgent.
Speaker:This is why you've got to, you've got to agree upfront.
Speaker:Even when it's urgent, you know, um, you, you, you follow the
Speaker:policy and procedure, right?
Speaker:but I do wonder if people are of away from urgent.
Speaker:As an example, if they start to understand, because like you said, it's
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:If bad actors start to realize, hey, people are not well to the urgency
Speaker:and we don't necessarily need to be urgent in order to be able to.
Speaker:Do this sort of attacks, maybe that starts to drop away.
Speaker:So I just wanna caution people to not rely on urgent as the only flag.
Speaker:It is one of the
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:but it should not be the signal
Speaker:Agreed.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's, it's not the only flag, but it's definitely a big flag.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, and of course, you know, I mean, this should go without saying, but things like,
Speaker:oh, I know, I know this person's voice.
Speaker:And, and also they knew, just like you mentioned earlier, they
Speaker:knew details about me, dude.
Speaker:They, they got all kinds of stuff, right.
Speaker:And, and how real the video looks, uh, because it's, it's
Speaker:pretty amazing, uh, especially if the video is very short, right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, so I, I, I guess the, the summary is that, you know, the human element
Speaker:is still, it's both our strongest defense and our weakest link, right?
Speaker:Um, we, we can't, we can't, we can't solve our way out of this with technology alone.
Speaker:It's got to be a combination of, uh, people, process and technology.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yep, a hundred percent agree.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, it's been fun.
Speaker:Prasanna.
Speaker:Deep fake Prasanna.
Speaker:Who knows?
Speaker:Who knows?
Speaker:All right, well, uh, thanks for listening folks, and, um, you know, um, be sure
Speaker:to subscribe wherever you see us.
Speaker:And, um, um, that's a wrap.