October 24, 2025
Sandy Kronenberg, CEO and Founder, Netarx
Social engineering has always been a bad actor’s most reliable weapon. Now AI has supercharged it. Phishing emails, smishing texts, vishing calls, and deepfakes are no longer isolated; they are now blended into coordinated attacks that overwhelm employees and exploit trust across multiple channels.
We’ve seen a 900% increase in deepfake-related cybercrime in the past year. At the same time, phishing remains the primary entry point for the majority of breaches, and voice-clone scams are growing at a rate of 66% year-over-year. Attackers stitch these together: a phishing email primes an employee to expect a call, the call comes from a voice-cloned “executive,” and a smishing text with a malicious link reinforces it. This choreography leaves little room for doubt, unless the proper defenses are in place.
Traditional tools aren’t designed for this. Malware scanners won’t detect a video puppeteering your CFO. Secure email gateways can’t flag a convincing message that passes authentication checks. Awareness training, while valuable, can’t prepare someone for a synthetic voice that sounds exactly like their boss giving urgent instructions. The gap is at the human layer of trust.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is the time to move beyond awareness alone. Leaders need to close that gap with real-time, AI-powered validation that cuts across email, messaging, voice, and video. Fraud losses tied to deepfakes are projected to exceed $25 billion annually by 2026. The cost of waiting is far higher than the cost of acting now.
Go to the original article: https://cyberdefensewire.com/building-a-cyber-strong-industry-from-awareness-to-action/
