How to prepare employees for a deepfake attack

As technology advances AI has brought forth new challenges for businesses. Most recently the threat of deepfake attacks, AI-generated photos, images or audio files has increased, causing business leaders and employees to raise concerns about how to mitigate risk, protect themselves, and guard their businesses.

Below are three steps business leaders can take to prepare employees for a deepfake attack.

Be Transparent

Before a crisis happens, business leaders must prepare employees for potential risks. If a crisis hits, employees are most often the first ones who have to communicate with angry or scared customers– calming their fears and resolving their problems. Be transparent with your employees and let them know potential risks or threats that a deepfake attacker might take advantage of before it happens.

Examples of deepfake attacks can include the inappropriate use of AI-generated images or the spread of a fictional video on social media. A deepfake attack on a construction company can look very different than one on a dentist’s office. Employees are a company’s front line of defense. It’s crucial to be transparent, clear and upfront about company practices and threats.

Create Steps for Workers to Follow

Most companies already have a crisis playbook to guide them through incidents. If your company does not have a protocol in place for employees to follow in case a crisis hits, start building one immediately. When preparing for deepfake attacks, protocol should include educating employees on how to identify a potential deepfake. In addition, employees should know what to do if they suspect a piece of media is fake. Make the step-by-step guide short and easy to follow. If a crisis hits this protocol will help employees navigate the first 24 hours of a crisis until upper management can step in to provide more direction.

Schedule Trainings

Before a crisis company leaders should hold group meetings with employees to get everyone on board with key messaging and proper crisis protocol. Incorporate crisis messaging into monthly talks and urge company leaders to visit with employees to ensure understanding. Work with your company’s IT team to educate employees on how to identify if the media is a deepfake or not, similar to how companies conduct training on how to identify phishing emails or other scams.

Other Strategies

Other strategies for preparing employees for deepfake crises include preparing a crisis playbook and preserving media connections. Take action now and safeguard your business against deepfakes. Take a look at our free guide on how to prepare for a deepfake crisis.

These Types of Deepfakes Can Affect Your Business

With the advancement of AI technology, businesses are seeing the emergence of new challenges and threats. A threat that has risen to the top of business leaders’ list of concerns is the threat of deepfakes. Deepfakes include the manipulation of videos, audio clips, photos, and other content for the purpose of misleading an audience or manipulating others into believing fake content is real.

The spread of misleading content can significantly damage a brand’s reputation and trust, causing a major loss of business. If you’re a business leader, you should be on the lookout for the following types of deepfakes and how they can affect your business.

Deepfakes and Financial Fraud

Financial fraud can be attempted through someone using a deepfake to appear as a trustworthy representative within an office. An example of financial deepfake fraud could be a voicemail left on an employee’s phone that sounds like their CEO or HR representative asking the employee to email over banking information for payroll reasons. However, in reality, the voice message is a deepfake, it’s an AI-generated message created to mimic a trustworthy person. This type of fraud is dangerous because an employee who has a lot on their plate or who is unaware of the threat of deepfakes might not think twice about confirming whether the request is legitimate.

Deepfakes and Impersonation

Impersonation is one of the most common types of deepfake fraud. Using AI tools, almost anyone can impersonate someone as long as they have access to photos, video, or voice recordings of them. Examples include the creation of an Instagram account mimicking the CEO of the company. The account may post photos of the CEO committing inappropriate actions, sharing extreme beliefs, or voicing unpopular opinions for the purpose of ruining the reputation of the CEO, brand or company. Impersonation is very dangerous for a business and can result in detrimental business loss and reputational damage, even if caught quickly.

Deepfake Impacts By Association

Sometimes, damage to a business’s reputation won’t be the main goal of a deepfake. However, many businesses in today’s world of viral videos and internet controversy will receive backlash through association. For example, an AI-generated video of a celebrity behaving inappropriately at a public event wearing a hat with the logo of a business could appear funny to viewers at first, but when spread can cause major repercussions. As viewers dive deeper into the video they can acknowledge the celebrity’s hat and the business it represents. This is just one simple example of how a business can be pulled into a crisis, incidents where businesses deal with repercussions because of association happen all the time and leaders need to be ready.

Deepfakes and News

Deepfake fraud in the form of a news story can spread far fast. It is arguably one of the hardest crises for businesses to stop once started. For many reasons, creators of this type of fraud spread illegitimate content appearing in the form of news articles or updates. Deepfakes like this can be dangerous as news outlets will sometimes pick up stories others have published, resulting in false information being shared. For example, an AI-generated video of an employee protesting in an extreme way is shared online and then shared via social media. Social media users may not realize the content is a deepfake and continue sharing. The video was fake from the start and users may eventually realize that, but now it is too late.

Ways to Combat Deepfake Fraud

Businesses need to be prepared for the threat of deepfakes and deepfake fraud. Some ways businesses can prepare for this challenge is by making sure employees are aware of the threat of deepfakes and are educated on how to tell if a piece of content might be deepfake fraud. In addition, businesses can increase digital security, keep media identification tools on hand, and create internal business strategies on what to do if a threat ever happens.

At 10 to 1 PR, we have secured agreements with highly reputable deepfake detection software companies capable of conducting immediate reviews of content in addition to creatine strategies and crisis playbooks for businesses to help prepare for the threat of deepfakes. We also have connections to AI Deepfake industry experts willing to provide their personal insights to the media and the public, exposing the deception.

Take action now and safeguard your business against deepfakes. Take a look at our free guide for how to prepare for a deepfake crisis.

Tag: Deepfakes