Digital document manipulation using AI and deepfakes have been revealed as the biggest growing threats facing the financial services industry going into 2025, according to a report by the Entrust Cybersecurity Institute.
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The findings reveal a deepfake attack happened every five minutes across all vertical business sectors in 2024, while digital document forgeries used for verifying identities for onboarding purposes increased 244% year-over-year.
For the first time, digital document forgery surpassed physical counterfeits as the leading method of fraud in 2024, with digital forgeries accounting for 57% of all document fraud. This marks a 1,600% surge since 2021 when almost all fraudulent documents were physical counterfeits.
With the rise in AI-assisted fraud, bad actors are now able to leverage more sophisticated attacks on documents, particularly National ID Cards (40.8% of attacks globally). The report finds threat actors are taking advantage of “as-a-service” platforms for phishing, fraud, and ransomware and the use of generative AI (GenAI) tools to create sophisticated digital forgery and injection attacks.
The research identifies AI-assisted deepfakes as an area of particular concern for global organizations, as basic fraud tactics that are relatively easy to discern, like phishing, are quickly giving way to hyper-realistic AI-generated deepfakes and synthetic identities. The rise in face-swap apps and GenAI tools has allowed fraudsters to perform and scale increasingly believable biometric fraud attacks. The capacity for malicious usage is widespread and includes fraudulent account openings, account takeovers, phishing scams, and misinformation campaigns.
The top three most targeted industries in 2024 were all related to financial services, with cryptocurrency seeing almost double the number of fraud attempts compared to any other industry (9.5%), followed by lending and mortgages (5.4%), and traditional banks (5.3%).
Crypto platforms saw the highest rate of fraudulent activity attempts, which have risen 50% year-over-year, from 6.4% in 2023 to 9.5% in 2024. At the same time, traditional banks experienced a 13% increase from last year in fraudulent onboarding attempts, which happened as inflation rates were also high, leading to a rise in lending and mortgage scams.
“The drastic shift in the global fraud landscape, marked by a significant rise in sophisticated, AI-powered attacks, is a warning that all business leaders must heed,” says Simon Horswell, senior fraud specialist at Entrust. “This year’s data underscores this alarming trend, highlighting how fraudsters are rapidly evolving their techniques. These threats are pervasive, touching every facet of business, government, and individuals alike. To stay ahead, security teams must proactively adapt their strategies, prioritize monitoring these emerging threats, and prepare their organizations to face this new reality. It’s no longer optional; it’s imperative.”
