Artificial Intelligence

AI-Driven Deception: A New Face of Corporate Fraud

Published

2 months ago

March 13, 2025

Written by Phil Muncaster, guest writer at ESET

Artificial intelligence (AI) is doing wonderful things for many businesses. It’s helping to automate repetitive tasks for efficiency and cost savings. It’s supercharging customer service and coding. And it’s helping to unearth insight to drive improved business decision-making. Way back in October 2023, Gartner estimated that 55% of organizations were in pilot or production mode with generative AI (GenAI). That figure will surely be higher today.

Yet criminal enterprises are also innovating with the technology, and that spells bad news for IT and business leaders everywhere. To tackle this mounting fraud threat, you need a layered response that focuses on people, process and technology.

What are the latest AI and deepfake threats?
Cybercriminals are harnessing the power of AI and deepfakes in several ways. They include:

Fake employees: Hundreds of companies have reportedly been infiltrated by North Koreans posing as remote working IT freelancers. They use AI tools to compile fake resumes and forged documents, including AI-manipulated images, in order to pass background checks. The end goal is to earn money to send back to the North Korean regime as well as data theft, espionage and even ransomware.
A new breed of BEC scams: Deepfake audio and video clips are being used to amplify business email compromise (BEC)-type fraud where finance workers are tricked into transferring corporate funds to accounts under control of the scammer. In one recent infamous case, a finance worker was persuaded to transfer $25 million to fraudsters who leveraged deepfakes to pose as the company’s CFO and other members of staff in a video conference call. This is by no means new, however – as far back as 2019, a UK energy executive was tricked into wiring £200,000 to scammers after speaking to a deepfake version of his boss on the phone.
Authentication bypass: Deepfakes are also being used to help fraudsters impersonate legitimate customers, create new personas and bypass authentication checks for account creation and log-ins. One particularly sophisticated piece of malware, GoldPickaxe, is designed to harvest facial recognition data, which is then used to create deepfake videos. According to one report, 13.5% of all global digital account openings were suspected of fraudulent activity last year.
Deepfake scams: Cybercriminals can also use deepfakes in less targeted ways, such as impersonating company CEOs and other high-profile figures on social media, to further investment and other scams. As ESET’s Jake Moore has demonstrated, theoretically any corporate leader could be victimized in the same way. On a similar note, as ESET’s latest Threat Report describes, cybercriminals are leveraging deepfakes and company-branded social media posts to lure victims as part of a new type of investment fraud called Nomani.
Password cracking: AI algorithms can be set to work cracking the passwords of customers and employees, enabling data theft, ransomware and mass identity fraud. One such example, PassGAN, can reportedly crack passwords in less than half a minute.
Document forgeries: AI-generated or altered documents are another way to bypass know your customer (KYC) checks at banks and other companies. They can also be used for insurance fraud. Nearly all (94%) claims handlers suspect at least 5% of claims are being manipulated with AI, especially lower value claims.
Phishing and reconnaissance: The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has warned of the uplift cybercriminals are getting from generative and other AI types. It claimed in early 2024 that the technology will “almost certainly increase the volume and heighten the impact of cyber-attacks over the next two years.” It will have a particularly high impact on improving the effectiveness of social engineering and reconnaissance of targets. This will fuel ransomware and data theft, as well as wide-ranging phishing attacks on customers.

What’s the impact of AI threats?
The impact of AI-enabled fraud is ultimately financial and reputational damage of varying degrees. One report estimates that 38% of revenue lost to fraud over the past year was due to AI-driven fraud. Consider how:

KYC bypass allows fraudsters to run up credit and drain legitimate customer accounts of funds.
Fake employees could steal sensitive IP and regulated customer information, creating financial, reputational and compliance headaches.
BEC scams can generate huge one-off losses. The category earned cybercriminals over $2.9 billion in 2023 alone.
Impersonation scams threaten customer loyalty. A third of customers say they’ll walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience.

Pushing back against AI-enabled fraud
Fighting this surge in AI-enabled fraud requires a multi-layered response, focusing on people, process and technology. This should include:

Frequent fraud risk assessments
An updating of anti-fraud policies to make them AI-relevant
Comprehensive training and awareness programs for staff (e.g., in how to spot phishing and deepfakes)
Education and awareness programs for customers
Switching on multifactor authentication (MFA) for all sensitive corporate accounts and customers
Improved background checks for employees, such as scanning resumes for career inconsistencies
Ensure all employees are interviewed on video before hiring
Improve collaboration between HR and cybersecurity teams

AI tech can also be used in this fight, for example:

AI-powered tools to detect deepfakes (e.g., in KYC checks).
Machine learning algorithms to detect patterns of suspicious behavior in staff and customer data.
GenAI to generate synthetic data, with which new fraud models can be developed, tested and trained.

As the battle between malicious and benevolent AI enters an intense new phase, organizations must update their cybersecurity and anti-fraud policies to ensure they keep pace with the evolving threat landscape. With so much at stake, failure to do so might impact long-term customer loyalty, brand value and even derail important digital transformation initiatives.

AI has the potential to change the game for our adversaries. But it can also do so for corporate security and risk teams.

Artificial Intelligence

Cequence Intros Security Layer to Protect Agentic AI Interactions

Published

1 day ago

April 29, 2025

Chris Fernando

Cequence Security has announced significant enhancements to its Unified API Protection (UAP) platform to deliver a comprehensive security solution for agentic AI development, usage, and connectivity. This enhancement empowers organizations to secure every AI agent interaction, regardless of the development framework. By implementing robust guardrails, the solution protects both enterprise-hosted AI applications and external AI APIs, preventing sensitive data exfiltration through business logic abuse and ensuring regulatory compliance.

There is no AI without APIs, and the rapid growth of agentic AI applications has amplified concerns about securing sensitive data during their interactions. These AI-driven exchanges can inadvertently expose internal systems, create significant vulnerabilities, and jeopardize valuable data assets. Recognising this critical challenge, Cequence has expanded its UAP platform, introducing an enhanced security layer to govern interactions between AI agents and backend services specifically. This new layer of security enables customers to detect and prevent AI bots such as ChatGPT from OpenAI and Perplexity from harvesting organizational data.

Internal telemetry across Global 2000 deployments shows that the overwhelming majority of AI-related bot traffic, nearly 88%, originates from large language model infrastructure, with most requests obfuscated behind generic or unidentified user agents. Less than 4% of this traffic is transparently attributed to bots like GPTBot or Gemini. Over 97% of it comes from U.S.-based IP addresses, highlighting the concentration of risk in North American enterprises. Cequence’s ability to detect and govern this traffic in real time, despite the lack of clear identifiers, reinforces the platform’s unmatched readiness for securing agentic AI in the wild.

Key enhancements to Cequence’s UAP platform include:

Block unauthorized AI data harvesting: Understanding that external AI often seeks to learn by broadly collecting data without obtaining permission, Cequence provides organizations with the critical capability to manage which AI, if any, can interact with their proprietary information.
Detect and prevent sensitive data exposure: Empowers organizations to effectively detect and prevent sensitive data exposure across all forms of agentic AI. This includes safeguarding against external AI harvesting attempts and securing data within internal AI applications. The platform’s intelligent analysis automatically differentiates between legitimate data access during normal application usage and anomalous activities signaling sensitive data exfiltration, ensuring comprehensive protection against AI-related data loss.
Discover and manage shadow AI: Automatically discovers and classifies APIs from agentic AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and Salesforce Agentforce, presenting a unified view alongside customers’ internal and third-party APIs. This comprehensive visibility empowers organizations to easily manage these interactions and effectively detect and block sensitive data leaks, whether from external AI harvesting or internal AI usage.
Seamless integration: Integrates easily into DevOps frameworks for discovering internal AI applications and generates OpenAPI specifications that detail API schemas and security mechanisms, including strong authentication and security policies. Cequence delivers powerful protection without relying on third-party tools, while seamlessly integrating with the customer’s existing cybersecurity ecosystem. This simplifies management and security enforcement.

“Gartner predicts that by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024, enabling 15% of day-to-day work decisions to be made autonomously. We’ve taken immediate action to extend our market-leading API security and bot management capabilities,” said Ameya Talwalkar, CEO of Cequence. “Agentic AI introduces a new layer of complexity, where every agent behaves like a bidirectional API. That’s our wheelhouse. Our platform helps organizations embrace innovation at scale without sacrificing governance, compliance, or control.”

These extended capabilities will be generally available in June.

Artificial Intelligence

Fortinet Expands FortiAI Across its Security Fabric Platform

Published

7 days ago

April 23, 2025

Edward Frank

Fortinet has announced major upgrades to FortiAI, integrating advanced AI capabilities across its Security Fabric platform to combat evolving threats, automate security tasks, and protect AI systems from cyber risks. As cybercriminals increasingly weaponize AI to launch sophisticated attacks, organizations need smarter defenses. Fortinet—with 500+ AI patents and 15 years of AI innovation—now embeds FortiAI across its platform to:

Stop AI-powered threats
Automate security and network operations
Secure AI tools used by businesses

“Fortinet’s AI advantage stems from the breadth and depth of our AI ecosystem—shaped by over a decade of AI innovation and reinforced by more patents than any other cybersecurity vendor,” said Michael Xie, Founder, President, and Chief Technology Officer at Fortinet. “By embedding FortiAI across the Fortinet Security Fabric platform, including new agentic AI capabilities, we’re empowering our customers to reduce the workload on their security and network analysts while improving the efficiency, speed, and accuracy of their security and networking operations. In parallel, we’ve added coverage across the Fabric ecosystem to enable customers to monitor and control the use of GenAI-enabled services within their organization.”

Key upgrades:
FortiAI-Assist – AI That Works for You

Automatic Network Fixes: AI configures, validates, and troubleshoots network issues without human help.
Smarter Security Alerts: Cuts through noise, prioritizing only critical threats.
AI-Powered Threat Hunting: Scans for hidden risks and traces attack origins.

FortiAI-Protect – Defending Against AI Threats

Tracks 6,500+ AI apps, blocking risky or unauthorized usage.
Stops new malware with machine learning.
Adapts to new attack methods in real time.

FortiAI-SecureAI – Safe AI Adoption

Protects AI models, data, and cloud workloads.
Prevents leaks from tools like ChatGPT.
Enforces zero-trust access for AI systems.

FortiAI processes queries locally, ensuring sensitive data never leaves your network.

Artificial Intelligence

SandboxAQ Platform Tackles AI Agent “Non-Human Identity” Threats

Published

1 week ago

April 23, 2025

Prarthana Mary

SandboxAQ has announced the general availability of AQtive Guard, a platform designed to secure Non-Human Identities (NHIs) and cryptographic assets. This critical security solution arrives as organizations worldwide face increasingly sophisticated AI-driven threats capable of autonomously infiltrating networks, bypassing traditional defenses, and exploiting vulnerabilities at machine speed.

Modern enterprises are experiencing an unprecedented surge in machine-to-machine communications, with billions of AI agents now operating across corporate networks. These digital entities – ranging from legitimate automation tools to potential attack vectors – depend on cryptographic keys, digital certificates, and machine identities that frequently go unmanaged. This oversight creates massive security gaps that malicious actors can exploit, leading to potential data breaches, compliance violations, and operational disruptions.

“There will be more than one billion AI agents with significant autonomous power in the next few years,” stated Jack Hidary, CEO of SandboxAQ. “Enterprises are giving AI agents a vastly increased range of capabilities to impact customers and real-world assets. This creates a dangerous attack surface for adversaries. AQtive Guard’s Discover and Protect modules address this urgent issue.”

AQtive Guard addresses these challenges through its integrated Discover and Protect modules. The Discover component maintains continuous, real-time visibility into all NHIs and cryptographic assets including keys, certificates, and algorithms – a fundamental requirement for maintaining regulatory compliance. The Protect module then automates critical security workflows, enforcing essential policies like automated credential rotation and certificate renewal to proactively mitigate risks before they can be exploited.

At the core of AQtive Guard’s capabilities are SandboxAQ’s industry-leading Large Quantitative Models (LQMs), which provide organizations with unmatched visibility and control over their cryptographic infrastructure. This advanced technology enables enterprises to successfully navigate evolving security standards, including the latest NIST requirements, while maintaining robust protection against emerging threats.

Marc Manzano, General Manager of Cybersecurity at SandboxAQ

“As organizations accelerate AI adoption and the use of agents and machine-to-machine communication across all business domains and functions, maintaining a real-time, accurate inventory of NHIs and cryptographic assets is an essential cybersecurity practice. Being able to automatically remediate vulnerabilities and policy violations identified is crucial to decrease time to mitigation and prevent potential breaches within the first day of use of our software,” said Marc Manzano, General Manager of Cybersecurity at SandboxAQ.

SandboxAQ has significantly strengthened AQtive Guard’s capabilities through deep technical integrations with two cybersecurity industry leaders. The platform now features robust integration with CrowdStrike’s Falcon® platform, enabling direct ingestion of endpoint data for real-time vulnerability detection and immediate one-click remediation. This seamless connection allows security teams to identify and neutralize threats with unprecedented speed.

Additionally, AQtive Guard now offers full interoperability with Palo Alto Networks’ security solutions. By analyzing and incorporating firewall log data, the platform delivers enhanced network visibility, improved threat detection, and stronger compliance with enterprise security policies across hybrid environments.

AQtive Guard delivers a comprehensive, AI-powered approach to managing NHIs and cryptographic assets through four key functional areas. The platform’s advanced vulnerability detection system aggregates data from multiple sources including major cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud, maintaining a continuously updated inventory of all cryptographic assets.

The solution’s AI-driven risk analysis engine leverages SandboxAQ’s proprietary Cyber LQMs to accurately prioritize threats while dramatically reducing false positives. This capability is enhanced by an integrated GenAI assistant that helps security teams navigate complex compliance requirements and implement appropriate remediation strategies.

For operational efficiency, AQtive Guard automates the entire lifecycle management of cryptographic assets, including issuance, rotation, and revocation processes. This automation significantly reduces manual errors while eliminating the risks associated with stale or compromised credentials. The platform also provides robust compliance support with pre-configured rulesets for major regulatory standards, customizable query capabilities, and comprehensive reporting features. These tools help organizations accelerate their transition to new NIST standards while maintaining continuous compliance with evolving requirements.

Available now as a fully managed, cloud-native solution, AQtive Guard is designed for rapid deployment and immediate impact. Enterprises can register for priority access to begin early adoption and conduct comprehensive risk assessments of their cryptographic infrastructure.