Risks from AI deepfakes are growing, says cybersecurity CEO whose voice was used to scam his own staff
AI is causing a drastic acceleration in phishing attacks, according to Californian company Zscaler. Its CEO knows from experience.
Jay Chaudhry, founder of USD30 billion ($44.4 billion) cybersecurity company Zscaler, is acutely aware of the growing risks posed by artificial intelligence deep fakes. After all, a scammer used Chaudhry’s voice to scam one of his own employees.
“There was a situation where somebody in my voice called one of our salespeople and said, ‘this is Jay calling’,” Chaudhry told Capital Brief during a trip to Sydney. The scammer quickly hung up and sent a text message saying: “Hey, I’m in a bad zone, I can’t talk… please buy 10 of these gift certificates.”
The hapless subordinate, convinced the CEO of his company was making the request, ended up spending USD1,500 on gift cards. Chaudhry laughed about it, because it could have been much worse. And he’s expecting that it will get much worse.
"We need to be paranoid about it," said Chaudhry, who was in Australia to promote Zscaler's integration into Google Chrome Enterprise and a partnership with Nvidia that uses generative AI that analyses company data and can highlight threats and breach points.
