Rethinking UC security amid the rise of deepfake technology
Rethinking UC security amid the rise of deepfake technology
Publish Date: 2026-03-30 16:12:00
Source Domain: www.techtarget.com
The growth of AI capabilities for collaboration workflows offers organizations productivity benefits, but it also creates new security threats that require new security strategies.
In a time when AI avatars can attend video meetings and AI assistants can make calls, how can you trust the person you’re talking to is real?
Deepfakes disrupting collaboration workflows isn’t theoretical — it’s happening.
The most prominent example of a deepfake scam occurred in 2024, when a finance employee of engineering firm Arup attended a video conference with senior management. The company’s CFO asked the employee to transfer millions of dollars to multiple external accounts.
What that employee didn’t realize was that the CFO and everyone else on the video conference were AI avatars, and the employee ended up transferring $25 million to cybercriminals.
“A whole conference call fooling somebody who had that level of authority — that’s a big deal,” said Robert Lee Harris, president of consulting firm Communications Advantage, Inc.
Deepfake scams are most effective when they fit into existing workflows, Harris said. The realism of deepfake technology matters less than the context of the interaction, where users are more likely to fall for deepfake scams if they fit into users’ knowledge and cultural context of collaboration workflows.
Harris and other IT leaders spoke at Enterprise Connect on how deepfakes are an emerging security challenge affecting both communications and contact center platforms.
Redefining communication security strategies
As AI-powered deepfake technology becomes more sophisticated, it will be harder to spot subtle cues that a person on a video call isn’t real, such as an avatar blinking, said Allen Ohanian, information security officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.
Other methods of verifying users, such as voice and video biometrics,…
