Staying Ahead of Digital Fraud: Is the Person You’re Meeting Really Who They Say They Are?
We’ve just witnessed one of the most concerning developments in digital fraud to date. In a case involving a large European bank, fraudsters used manipulated video and AI-generated voices to simulate a live video meeting with top executives, convincingly enough to almost trigger the payment of millions.
The video footage was entirely fabricated. The people speaking were never there. Their likenesses and voices had been digitally reanimated and orchestrated into a synthetic, but highly believable meeting.
This incident marks a turning point. We are no longer in the comfort of speculation when it comes to deepfake and synthetic media attacks. These threats are here. They are operational. They are alarmingly effective.
When trust is digitally manufactured, you need more than just a password-protected link to feel and be secure. You need assurance that the person on the other end of a call really is who they say they are. You need provenance, traceability and layers of authentication that go beyond what conventional platforms provide.
The protagonists of the attack weren’t relying on futuristic or sophisticated technology. Far from it. They used readily available tools in the form of off-the-shelf AI voice generators and old video clips, stitched together with deceptive precision. Their success wasn’t just technical, it was psychological. The familiarity of a trusted face, the calming authority of a CEO’s voice and the formal structure of a business meeting all combined to give the usual defences the slip. That’s what makes these attacks so powerful.
It’s easy to think that you and those in your organisation wouldn’t be naïve enough to fall for a fake video meeting. But when the deception plays out over a live call that looks and sounds exactly like your own leadership team, the threat becomes real in an entirely new way. This isn’t just applicable to the banking sector. Any organisation, large or small, public or private, is vulnerable if the environment in which they communicate is not built with integrity and security as foundational principles.
Amidst the evolving complexity and nature of digital threats, tightening regulations and the shift to hybrid working, we’ve introduced Kinly Secure Meet to answer the demand for secure and robust collaboration infrastructures that adapt to change.
Kinly Secure Meet is a comprehensive meeting solution delivered in partnership with Orange Business and Pexip to facilitate secure and compliant meetings on a managed, data-controlled and dynamically scalable sovereign cloud platform. Ideal for organisations that prioritise privacy, control and seamless access, it uniquely supplements primary video collaboration tools and can be leveraged for extra sensitive, important and security-focussed meetings and user groups.
Kinly Secure Meet is built from the ground up to offer identity validation, restricted access controls, end-to-end encryption and various security awareness features, tools that could have made the difference in a situation like the European bank.
Henrik Johannesen, Senior Director BDM Cloud Services, Kinly, said:
“We’ve long championed the importance of secure and verifiable digital communication. This is precisely why we developed Kinly Secure Meet, a meeting platform engineered not just for clarity and collaboration, but for trust.
The future of business communication requires a shift from connectivity-first to trust-first platforms. Kinly Secure Meet doesn’t just connect people, it verifies them. It tracks who’s in the meeting, ensures content integrity and makes sure nothing happens in the shadows. We are committed to the fight against the threats of today and tomorrow and look forward to supporting modern businesses with secure and compliant communications, no matter what.”
The takeaway from this experience is sobering but necessary. Digital impersonation is now a viable and scalable threat. Every organisation needs to rethink what a secure meeting really means. Trust isn’t a given anymore. It needs to be earned, protected and actively maintained, especially when criminals are using your own face and voice against you.
Protect your organisation. Discover Kinly Secure Meet.
