Explore how AI-driven cyberattacks and deepfakes are reshaping trust in authentication and identity.

Artificial intelligence is transforming identity at an unprecedented pace. It’s reshaping how we authenticate, how we manage access, and how we verify that the person on the other end of a screen or a call is who they claim to be.

At the same time, AI is breaking many of the trust signals organizations once relied on. Deepfakes, automated cyberattacks and AI-assisted impersonation have made appearance, language, behavior and communication unreliable as proof of identity.

So, is trust dead in the age of AI?

Not quite. But trust has changed, and organizations must change with it.

The Trust Crisis: When Traditional Signals Fail

There was a time when identity proofing was simple: signatures, documents or photo IDs. Even multi-factor authentication (MFA) became a widely accepted level-up in security.

Those days are gone.

Attackers now use AI to imitate or manipulate nearly every identity cue that people once viewed as trustworthy.

AI-driven attackers can:

• Produce convincing deepfake photos, audio and video
• Clone communication patterns and writing styles
• Replicate corporate websites, log–in portals and email domains
• Automate cyberattacks at machine speed

Trust is not gone, but it’s no longer passive. 

Organizations must engineer it intentionally using stronger, more adaptive authentication rooted in standards like FIDO and Crescendo devices.

AI Attacks Are Now Autonomous

AI is transforming cyberattacks into continuous, self-directed operations. Many attacks no longer require active human involvement.

Common AI-accelerated threats include: 

Automated Identity Impersonation
AI can mimic how users communicate, behave and log in. It can insert itself into conversations and systems while looking completely legitimate.

Adaptive Social Engineering
Attackers use AI to write emails, respond in real time, translate language and coach individuals during live interactions. It removes the skill barrier and scales social engineering far beyond human limits.

Brandjacking and Corporate Spoofing 
Entire websites, portals, and internal communication templates can be cloned in seconds, complete with logos and tone.

Fully Autonomous Attack Chains
Agentic AI tools can perform reconnaissance, find vulnerabilities, craft exploits, escalate privileges and maintain persistence without supervision.

AI-Based Vulnerability Discovery
Attack surfaces that took human testers days to evaluate can now be analyzed in minutes.

These attacks operate at machine speed, which means defenses must operate at machine speed, too.

The Rise of Deepfake Driven Cyberattacks

Deepfakes have become one of the most disruptive tool in an attacker’s arsenal. They undermine one of the oldest foundations of trust: believing what you see and hear. 

In corporate environments, deepfakes now enable attackers to convincingly replicate identity cues across video, audio and chat. 

Deepfake tactics include:

1. Bypassing Video and Voice Verification

Attackers can now spoof facial movements, micro expressions and speech patterns in real time.

In one documented incident,  a major multinational firm was deceived in a live video meeting by deepfake versions of several executives. Believing the call was legitimate, employees approved a twenty five million dollar transfer.

Traditional verification by sight or sound cannot keep up.

2. Enhancing Social Engineering

Deepfake videos and audio can impersonate leaders, pressure employees or validate fraudulent requests. These methods bypass the guardrails of human intuition.

3. Recruiting Through Fraudulent Hiring Schemes

State–linked groups have used deepfakes to fake entire hiring pipelines. Candidates are tricked into running malicious tools during tests or interviews, giving attackers access to sensitive systems before onboarding even begins.

4. Forging Corporate Messaging

Some attacks now simulate executive level briefings or internal announcements through synthetic video. These messages create urgency that pushes teams into high risk decisions.

5. Scaling Across Every Channel

Deepfake-based fraud isn’t limited to single-use scams. Because deepfakes are digital, scalable and cheap to produce, attackers can flood multiple channels from email, video calls, chat, voicemail — and even social media — all with impersonations and fake identity cues. This amplifies the potential reach and impact. 

For example, AI-synthesized videos impersonating public figures have recently gone viral, used to promote scams or misleading narratives that affect broad audiences.

Identity can no longer rely on appearance or behavior. It must be rooted in cryptography.

Treat AI as a Member of Your Workforce

 AI is no longer just a tool. It behaves like a participant in workflows and decision making.
 Organizations should govern AI systems the same way they govern people.

This includes:

• Defining what the AI system is allowed to do
• Controlling what systems or data it can access
• Monitoring its activities
• Auditing decisions and outputs
• Removing or disabling AI agents when necessary

This approach mirrors modern identity governance. HID’s Crescendo solution helps enforce these controls by providing hardware-backed, phishing-resistant authentication for workforce identity.

When AI is treated like an identity with boundaries and oversight, trust becomes manageable again.

Avoiding the Numbness Trap 

After years of breaches and sensational headlines, many organizations have grown desensitized to cyber risks. 

This numbness is dangerous because AI driven threats are increasing in speed and sophistication.

Organizations can avoid this trap by:

• Making decisions based on objective risk, not emotion
• Viewing AI through a business lens
• Staying curious and informed
• Treating governance as mandatory, not optional
• Anchoring identity in strong, hardware backed authentication          

Five Principles for Trust-Centric Identity in the Age of AI

Building durable trust requires a mindset shift.

Five principles stand out as essential:

1. Understand Your Current State — Know where AI already influences your systems, workflows or vendors
2. Apply Governance That Treats AI as a Participant — Give AI systems access rules, oversight and identity controls
3. Engage Users Early — Successful adoption requires users to understand the value and feel confident with new tooling
4. Encourage Experimentation — Teams that embrace AI responsibly will gain competitive advantage
5. Build Identity for Continuous Acceleration — Authentication must be adaptive, hardware rooted, and resistant to phishing and impersonation

The Move Toward Converged Authentication

AI is dissolving the line between physical and digital threats.

Organizations are responding by moving to converged authentication, which unifies identity across physical access, digital systems, and the workforce.

A converged model helps organizations:

• Provide one trusted credential for both physical and digital access
• Apply consistent, context-aware policies across environments
• Reduce administrative overhead
• Strengthen defenses against impersonation
• Improve user experience through unified journeys

HID’s Crescendo platform supports this shift by providing a single hardware-backed credential that operates across both physical and digital ecosystems.

Organizations that embrace convergence will be better prepared to maintain trust as AI evolves.

Join the Conversation

In the premiere episode of our new podcast, Authentic Talks, we sit down with Mark Dallmeier, cybersecurity veteran and author of Opportunity Seized, Squandered, Lost: An AI Business Parable. We explore how AI is reshaping digital trust and why organizations need to rethink authentication in a world where identity can be faked in seconds. 

Listen to the episode to hear the full discussion and subscribe to hear the full discussion and stay updated as the series continues.

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