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As this year’s European Cybersecurity Awareness Month draws to a close, we take a closer look at how cybercriminals are using AI to amplify and enhance their scams, and how you can protect against them, spot them and stop them in their tracks.
Every October, European Cybersecurity Awareness Month reminds us that security is not only about technology. It is also about the choices we make every day.
This year, it is clearer than ever that artificial intelligence is reshaping both the opportunities and risks facing individuals and organisations. While AI is helping businesses work smarter and faster, it is also enabling cybercriminals to operate at greater speed, scale and sophistication than ever before, with frontier models making news regularly for their ability to broach cyber defences.
This kind of AI tool is accelerating the discovery of vulnerabilities, shortening the time between vulnerability detection and exploitation, and increasing the scale of cyber threats facing organisations worldwide.
Seeing is no longer believing
One of the most significant shifts is in fraud and social engineering. AI-generated phishing messages can now be highly personalised and written in any language. Voice cloning technology can replicate a person's voice from just seconds of audio, while deepfake technology can create increasingly convincing video and identity impersonations. Fraudsters are beginning to combine these capabilities into end-to-end scam campaigns that mimic trusted people, organisations and processes.
Indeed, there are already documented cases of criminals successfully using a sophisticated combination of messaging, email, documentation and deepfake video calls to impersonate senior public officials and defraud a victim of millions. The lesson is clear: familiar voices, faces and messages are no longer sufficient proof of identity.
What this means for organisations
AI-enabled threats are affecting organisations across every sector:
• Consumers may be on the receiving end of convincing voice-cloning or impersonation scams.
• Employees may be targeted with fake requests appearing to come from senior leaders.
• Identity verification and onboarding processes face growing risks from deepfakes and synthetic identities.
• Customer services teams, helpdesks and contact centres are increasingly being targeted by AI-assisted impersonation attempts.
At the same time, AI tools themselves face their own cybersecurity challenges in the form of prompt injection attacks, data leakage, model manipulation and autonomous AI agents with access to sensitive information and systems.
Small actions to stay safe
The good news is that effective protection still starts with simple, consistent behaviours:
• Pause when faced with urgent or secretive requests.
• Verify unusual requests through a second, independent channel.
• Apply four-eyes principles for sensitive actions and payments.
• Never share credentials, security codes or authentication information.
• Report suspicious activity immediately, even if it later proves to be a false alarm.
The principle is simple: verify the request, not the face or the voice.