By Harshit
JANUARY 11, 2026 — U.S. TECHNOLOGY & CYBERSECURITY
Deepfakes are no longer a fringe internet phenomenon or a novelty confined to manipulated videos. In 2026, they have become a structural threat to digital trust itself — undermining identity systems, bypassing authentication controls, and enabling fraud at industrial scale.
Security experts warn that the danger posed by deepfakes extends far beyond fake videos or voice-cloned phone calls. The real risk is that artificial intelligence can now manufacture entirely new identities that appear legitimate from the very first interaction.
“When people think about deepfakes, they often picture fake videos or voice-cloned calls,” said Arif Mamedov, chief executive of Regula Forensics. “In reality, the bigger risk runs much deeper. Deepfakes are dangerous because they attack identity itself, which is the foundation of digital trust.”
Identity Fraud at Machine Scale
Unlike traditional fraud, which relies on stolen credentials or leaked personal data, deepfakes allow criminals to fabricate identities from scratch. Synthetic faces, cloned voices, forged documents, and believable digital behavior can be generated instantly — and in massive quantities.
Mamedov said this shift introduces three systemic risks.
First, authentication mechanisms fail when they rely on static signals such as facial recognition, voice matching, or scanned documents. Second, fraud becomes scalable: AI allows criminals to generate thousands of fake identities simultaneously. Third, organizations gain a false sense of security, believing their controls are effective while fraud grows undetected.
Regula’s 2025 research found that deepfakes do not replace traditional fraud techniques — they amplify them, exposing long-standing weaknesses and driving up financial losses.
How Deepfakes Bypass Human Judgment
Security leaders say deepfakes succeed not because systems are weak, but because people are human.
“Traditional security assumes that once someone is authenticated, they are legitimate,” said Mike Engle, chief strategy officer at 1Kosmos. “Deepfakes break that assumption.”
Once a synthetic identity is enrolled into an organization’s systems, downstream controls such as multi-factor authentication, VPNs, and single sign-on may end up protecting the attacker instead of the enterprise.
According to David Lee, field CTO at Saviynt, deepfakes exploit human psychology more than technical flaws.
“When a voice or video sounds right, people move quickly, skip verification, and assume authority is legitimate,” Lee said. “A believable executive voice can authorize payments, override processes, or create urgency that short-circuits rational decision-making.”
Smaller organizations are particularly vulnerable. James E. Lee, president of the Identity Theft Resource Center, warned that deepfake-driven fraud can disproportionately harm thin-margin businesses through financial losses, system compromise, and unplanned recovery costs.
Deepfake Attacks Are Accelerating
Cybersecurity researchers say the rapid growth of deepfake attacks is driven by accessibility.
“The tools are cheap or free, the models are widely available, and the quality of output now exceeds what many verification systems were built to handle,” Mamedov said.
According to Ruth Azar-Knupffer, co-founder of VerifyLabs, open-source generators and easy-to-use AI platforms have turned identity fabrication into a plug-and-play ecosystem.
“What used to require significant effort is now automated,” she said. “Fraudsters can buy complete synthetic persona kits — faces, voices, and backstories — on demand.”
Regula data shows that roughly one in three organizations has already encountered deepfake fraud, placing it on par with established threats like document forgery and social engineering.
Training Helps — But Isn’t Enough
Some organizations are responding with employee education. This week, KnowBe4 launched new training programs focused on recognizing deepfake-driven manipulation.
According to Perry Carpenter, KnowBe4’s chief human risk management strategist, the key is not spotting technical flaws in a video or voice — but recognizing emotional manipulation.
“If you feel urgency, fear, authority, or pressure, that’s a signal to slow down,” Carpenter said. “Those emotional triggers matter more than whether a voice sounds real.”
However, experts caution that awareness alone is insufficient.
“If your control depends on someone recognizing a fake, you don’t have control — you have a gamble,” Saviynt’s Lee said.
The Shift to “Never Trust, Always Verify”
Security leaders increasingly argue that deepfakes expose a deeper problem: organizations still rely on recognition rather than verification.
Rich Mogull, chief analyst at the Cloud Security Alliance, recommends process-based defenses rather than visual inspection.
That includes multi-step approval for financial transactions, mandatory out-of-band verification for executive requests, and controls that prevent bypassing established workflows.
“The long-term solution isn’t better human detection,” Lee said. “It’s treating identity as something that must be explicitly validated and continuously enforced by systems.”
In other words, deepfakes are not just another cyber threat. They are a stress test for digital identity itself — exposing whether organizations truly verify trust, or merely assume it.