MATTHEW RENIRIE | AI demands a new approach to cybersecurity in banking
MATTHEW RENIRIE | AI demands a new approach to cybersecurity in banking
Publish Date: 2026-07-13 23:00:00
Source Domain: www.businessday.co.za
Most conversations about AI in banking begin with the same question: how do we protect ourselves against AI-enabled fraud?
It is an understandable concern. Generative AI can already produce convincing voices, documents, identities, and digital interactions at a scale unimaginable only a few years ago. Deloitte estimates AI-enabled fraud losses in the US banking sector could more than triple to $40bn by 2027.
We’re asking the wrong question.
The challenge facing financial institutions is not how to defend against another cyber threat but rather how to redesign cybersecurity for a world where authenticity itself can no longer be taken for granted.
For more than two decades, cybersecurity has evolved by adding new layers of protection to existing systems. Firewalls protected networks, encryption secured data and multi-factor authentication strengthened access control. Each new threat was met with another security control.
AI changes that mode, and unlike previous technologies, AI does not simply attack systems, it undermines the assumptions on which those systems were built.
We have traditionally assumed that people are who they claim to be; documents are genuine, voices belong to real individuals and images provide reliable evidence, but increasingly, none of those assumptions can be accepted without verification.
That is why deepfake detection, while important, is not the only answer.
Too many organisations are treating AI security as another product category that can be integrated into an existing technology stack. It cannot. Deepfake detection is one control within a much broader cyber architecture that must establish authenticity continuously across every digital interaction.
Identity verification, biometrics, liveness detection, behavioural analytics, device intelligence, fraud prevention and AI-generated media detection are no longer independent technologies. They are becoming interdependent components of a single resilience framework.
This architecture matters…
