- Factor One: “Hacks” (of all kind) are now commonplace. Thanks to news coverage at unprecedented levels, everybody knows about them. That means heightened end-customer awareness and sensitivity to vulnerabilities, as well as reputational damages.
Latest case in point: last month’s (December 2019) viral account of a malevolent individual talking to an 8-year-old girl through the family’s Ring Nursery Camera
- Factor Two: Fakes and “DeepFakes” are stealing the spotlight with their star power. New software comes to market every other month; some claiming to need only 3 minutes of recordings to train a voice synthesizer to sound like you. This gives brands incentive to employ anti-fraud solutions that detect synthesized voices in real time.
Related Fact: 14,698 deepfake videos were identified on the internet in June and July (2019), up from 7,964 last December — an 84% increase within only seven months. Clearly, we have the roots of a fraud problem.
- Factor Three: “Vishing” (the voice equivalent of “phishing") incidents are accelerating. Chalk it up to the siren song of speech technology combined with AI. Such a strong combo creates an irresistible challenge for imposters and fraudsters. Voice is their new chosen weapon.
Reality check: Training is a big factor in this instance because enterprise employees are well-trained on spotting potential phishing emails, they are not ready to do so for voice, especially because synthesized voices sound so convincing.
