November 20, 2025
Every November, hundreds of organizations around the world unite to raise fraud awareness in their workplaces and communities during International Fraud Awareness Week, an annual campaign established by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE). Taking place November 16-22, 2025, this year's observance comes at a critical juncture as organizations lose an estimated 5% of their revenue annually due to fraud, making it one of the most financially devastating threats facing businesses today. As digital transformation accelerates and fraudsters adopt increasingly sophisticated AI-powered tactics, the technology sector finds itself on the front lines of this escalating battle.
The stakes have never been higher for the tech industry. Insurance fraud alone is the second most costly white-collar crime in America after tax evasion, while cyber-enabled fraud schemes continue to evolve at an alarming pace. From phishing and social engineering attacks to cryptocurrency scams and identity theft, modern fraudsters are exploiting every technological advancement for illicit gain. The pervasiveness of fraud extends beyond financial losses-it erodes customer trust, damages organizational reputations, and in severe cases, forces businesses to shut down entirely. This reality makes fraud prevention not just a compliance issue, but a business continuity imperative.
This year's theme, "Fraud prevention is a team effort - don't sit on the sidelines," highlights the importance of working together and shared responsibility, emphasizing that combating fraud requires collaboration across all organizational levels and sectors. For technology companies, this means implementing robust security frameworks, leveraging AI and machine learning for fraud detection, fostering cultures of transparency and whistleblowing, and educating employees about emerging threats. International Fraud Awareness Week serves as a crucial reminder that vigilance, innovation, and collective action are our strongest defenses against an enemy that costs the global economy trillions annually.
In recognition of this vital awareness campaign, VMblog reached out to leading technology experts, cybersecurity professionals, and industry thought leaders to gather their insights on the current fraud landscape, emerging threats, and best practices for protection. Below, these experts share their perspectives on keeping organizations and individuals safe in an increasingly complex digital world.
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Sandy Kronenberg, founder and CEO, Netarx
Fraud has entered a new phase fueled by AI where deception moves faster than detection, and human judgment has become the target to exploit. Attackers no longer need to steal credentials or breach firewalls; they simply mimic a trusted voice or familiar face. What once took days of preparation can now be done in seconds with a few lines of synthetic audio or a convincing video clip.
During International Fraud Awareness Week, we must recognize that trust has become the biggest vulnerability inside organizations, and AI is making it easier to exploit. Deepfakes, synthetic identities and AI-generated disinformation are rewriting the cybercrime playbook. These attacks don’t rely on malware or code. They work because we tend to believe what looks and sounds real.
Traditional defenses like employee training and multifactor authentication still matter, but they can’t stand alone. A six-digit code won’t protect you from a voice that sounds like your CEO or a video that looks exactly like your finance director. The problem is no longer access; it’s authenticity.
Defending against this new wave of fraud requires technology that learns and adapts as quickly as the threats themselves. It demands AI that can distinguish human reality from synthetic illusion in real time, linking digital signals across every channel, interpreting them in context and verifying authenticity without disrupting how people work.
In this new environment, trust can’t be assumed. It must be tested, verified and earned every time. The faster we accept that, the better prepared organizations will be for the next generation of deception.
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Brandon Traffanstedt Field CTO, CyberArk Phishing in all its flavors—from wide-spread and opportunistic, to targeted, to augmented with the help of artificial intelligence, remains one of the top drivers of fraud. No matter how advanced security technologies get, they alone are simply not enough to safeguard against high volumes of human error and misplaced trust, especially as employees are driven to higher performance and operational standards. To protect against fraud effectively requires a combination of strict identity governance and a culture that promotes and rewards employees to stop, question, and verify before acting. This notion goes against the human nature of trust first, verify later, so organizations looking to lower their risk profile must dedicate resources to building this culture and awareness in the same way they fund identity and network protection. The foundation of digital safety is identity security: that is making sure every user, machine, and application has the correct permissions and that individuals appreciate the importance of these permissions. The success of cybersecurity is also dependent on having the right tools and technology to assume that the end-user will be bypassed, but culture cannot be discounted. When employees grasp that their individual action can jeopardize the whole organization and are being consistently uplifting for performing the right actions, their behavior moves past simply following rules to avoid hassle towards personal responsibility—and that is when real security rigor and resiliency emerge. Organizations should continue to invest in regular security awareness training that leans into hands-on practice and positive reinforcement rather than slide-led, especially as bad actors become more sophisticated in their approach leveraging AI for proofing, stronger character replacement in URLs, better integrated quishing (QR code attacks), and more to make their efforts appear more legitimate.
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Simon Horswell, Senior Fraud Specialist, Entrust Fraud is escalating in both sophistication and scale, with attackers leveraging AI, automation, and organized rings to exploit vulnerabilities. Over the past year, their tactics have diversified, targeting people, identity elements, and prevention systems. Attackers are using psychological manipulation through phishing, social engineering, and impersonation scams to trick individuals into sharing their own genuine credentials or transferring funds. “Meanwhile, attackers are also targeting identity documents and attempting to bypass biometric systems with deepfakes, which now account for one in every five biometric fraud attempts. On a more technical level, attackers are also targeting prevention systems with injection attacks, which surged 40% over the past year, as well as device emulation and automated bot attacks, to bypass the very technology that's meant to stop them. This International Fraud Awareness Week is a reminder that identity is now at the frontline of fraud. As fraud evolves with AI, organizations must secure every layer – people, identity, and systems, with AI-driven defenses to adapt and stay ahead of fraud. ++ Patrick Harding, Chief Product Architect, Ping Identity Agentic AI is transforming the fraud landscape at an unprecedented pace. With autonomous decision-making and adaptive learning capabilities, fraudsters now use AI to craft context-aware phishing schemes and deepfake videos and voices that blur the line between authenticity and manipulation. These intelligent scams are rapidly eroding consumer trust, with 39% of consumers citing AI-driven phishing as their top modern fraud concern. International Fraud Awareness Week underscores the urgent need for vigilance in this new era where defense and deception are evolving in parallel. Intelligent threats demand equally intelligent defenses. Organizations must invest in systems that detect and respond to attacks in real time while continuously learning and adapting to new tactics. Effective identity and access management now requires evaluation of the full context behind each agentic AI access request, including intent and behavior. By combining adaptive authentication with AI-driven fraud detection, organizations can anticipate emerging risks, strengthen digital trust, and protect identities in an increasingly autonomous and agentic world. ++ Gunnar Peterson, CISO, Forter As fraud becomes increasingly automated and borderless, the integrity of digital commerce depends on how well we understand and secure identity in motion. Fraudsters now operate with the same tools that power innovation—AI, automation, and global connectivity—and exploit every gap between security layers. Resilience begins by moving beyond transaction-level checks to a continuous view of identity, tracking how legitimate and fraudulent behavior evolve across the entire customer lifecycle. Static fraud controls can’t keep pace with dynamic, AI-driven threats. What’s needed is identity intelligence that adapts in real time and connects behavioral, device, and network signals to discern intent, not just activity. By uniting global intelligence with adaptive detection, organizations can outpace emerging attack methods while preserving trust for legitimate customers. International Fraud Awareness Week is a reminder that preventing fraud isn’t just about blocking bad actors; it’s about enabling secure, seamless interactions that foster digital trust. Protecting identity at scale strengthens the entire ecosystem of online commerce, helping businesses grow with confidence and customers engage without fear. ++
Nuno Sebastião, Co-Founder and CEO, Feedzai
Where money moves, fraud follows — and in today’s AI-driven world, it’s multiplying faster than ever. Bad actors are using new tools, new disguises, and new ways to strike. Scams are no longer isolated incidents; they’re intelligent, automated, and scaling at digital speed. As AI deepfakes blur the lines between real and fake, the threat isn’t just technical — it’s personal. A single click, call, or message can drain a lifetime of savings. Financial institutions can’t afford to play catch-up. They need defenses that are as adaptive, fast, and unrelenting as the fraudsters themselves. The use of trusted AI isn’t optional anymore. It’s the front line of protection for every transaction in our global economy. The future of finance depends on it.
++ Ashish Jain, CTO, OneSpan
Fraud has always subsisted on identity and verification gaps, and this year’s Fraud Week is a timely call to action as AI-based threats amplify existing threats like phishing and beget new ones like deepfakes. Authentication methods have strengthened the proverbial front door to keep bad actors at bay, but advanced methods like deepfakes and AI agents better enable them to access back windows and side doors. Continuous authentication that spans the later steps of transactions and agreements is the next key step in designing a fraud-free future. In some places, this reality has spurred digital ID verification laws, but emphasizing privacy is a necessary consideration there. Verification needs to work in lockstep with authentication to build a digital trust whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, allowing businesses to reap the benefits of digital channels while also diluting the risks.
++ Tyler Moffitt, Senior Security Analyst, OpenText Cybersecurity Fraud has evolved far beyond the days of clumsy scams and unconvincing phishing emails. Today’s criminals operate more like sophisticated hackers, leveraging automation, AI and social engineering to achieve large-scale, targeted attacks that exploit both technology and human behavior. Schemes that once stood out as suspicious are now engineered to look legitimate, making vigilance a critical part of every organization’s defense.
This International Fraud Awareness Week is a chance for employees to start thinking and acting like white hat hackers – the ethical cybersecurity experts who serve as a first line of defense in the digital world. They use hands-on experience, technical skill and creativity to anticipate threats before they happen, testing systems from the inside to strengthen defenses and outthink attackers. Here are five ways employees can adopt the white hat hacker mindset, this week and beyond:
Question everything:
Every employee, regardless of role, can be targeted. Double-check financial and data-related requests through a second communication channel before acting.
Know your weak spots:
Identify where trust and process gaps create openings for exploitation, and make auditing and closing those areas a routine practice.
Stay ahead of the AI curve:
Understand how generative AI is being used to craft convincing scams, and learn how to spot them. Within your organization, adopt AI responsibly by establishing clear policies and security controls.
Build security into culture:
Reward attentiveness, transparency and prompt reporting – not just compliance. Create an environment where employees feel confident raising concerns early.
Think prevention, not reaction:
Emphazie awareness, multi-layered security and regular testing to eliminate vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them.
White hat hackers succeed by staying one step ahead, and the same principle applies to employees. True resilience comes from layered, proactive defenses that evolve alongside threats and work together to detect, respond to and recover from attacks as a unified front.
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