A Company Guide to Protecting Against Deepfake Fraud

One morning, your finance manager's phone rings. The caller seems to be the CEO in person: same voice, same way of speaking, even the same face on a video call. "There's an urgent, confidential payment — send it to this account right away." A few years ago this scenario was a remote possibility; today it is a real threat known as deepfake fraud.

As of 2026, deepfakes — highly convincing fake content that uses artificial intelligence to imitate a person's face and voice — have reached a critical threshold in cyber fraud. It is no longer just about pre-recorded fake videos: real-time deepfake calls are now possible. The person you believe you are speaking with live may, in fact, be an imitation.

In this article, without panic but with the seriousness the topic deserves, we explain how deepfake fraud works and the simple protocols you can put in place today to protect your company. The good news: most of the effective safeguards require discipline, not expensive technology.

What exactly is a deepfake?

In the simplest terms, a deepfake is fake content produced by artificial intelligence that learns from recordings of a person's voice and image and then imitates that person's face and voice with striking realism. The resulting video or audio can be hard to distinguish from the real thing at first glance — sometimes even on careful inspection.

What makes it dangerous is not the technology itself but how it is used. Fraudsters combine these tools with classic social engineering: they use a trusted face and voice to deceive people. And the raw material is usually already out there — interviews, promotional videos, social media posts, even voice messages.

How a typical attack unfolds, step by step

The most common scenario is this: a senior executive's voice or image is imitated to request an urgent money transfer from the finance team. The flow usually follows four steps:

1. Preparation: The fraudster collects publicly available audio and video of the target executive and researches who the company works with and who handles its payments.
2. Contact: An employee on the finance team receives a phone or video call. The voice and face belong to the familiar executive — or so it appears.
3. Pressure: The request is always urgent: an opportunity that cannot be missed, a confidential deal, a payment that must be made "without asking anyone."
4. Transfer: Trusting the voice and face they know, the employee makes the payment. By the time the fraud is discovered, it is usually too late.

Attacks like these can cause companies significant financial losses. And money is not the only casualty: the team's confidence in itself and its processes takes a hit as well.

The "we're too small to be a target" fallacy

When deepfake fraud comes up, large corporations come to mind first. Yet as these tools spread, attackers' target lists grow — and for SMEs the picture is more critical for three reasons.

First, in many SMEs payment processes rest on people and habits rather than written rules; "the boss called, so I sent it" is, in truth, a procedural gap. Second, in small teams the same person often both receives the instruction and makes the payment, with no second pair of eyes in between. Third, a loss of the same size wounds a small company disproportionately more. If you want to approach cyber risks as a whole, our data security and backup guide for SMEs is a good starting point.

Warning signs that should raise suspicion

However flawless the imitation, the fraud itself almost always follows the same behavioral patterns. If even one of these four signs is present, stop:

• Pressure to hurry: Phrases like "right now," "within five minutes," or "before the bank closes" are meant to take your thinking time away.
• A request for secrecy: "Don't tell anyone" or "keep this between us" is an attempt to keep you from verifying.
• An unusual channel: If a manager who normally emails you suddenly video-calls on a messaging app, or reaches out from a number they have never used, take notice.
• A change in payment details: A new account number, a different bank, an unusual amount, or a new recipient — each of these alone warrants verification.

A fraudster's most powerful weapon is not imitation technology — it is denying you the time to think. Any request that tries to stop you from pausing and verifying deserves, for that very reason, to be verified once more.

A five-step company protection protocol

Recommended safeguards include two-factor verification, a pre-agreed internal safe word and callback protocol, AI-supported fraud detection, and employee awareness training. Let's turn these into five actionable steps:

1. The callback rule: Every call requesting a money transfer is ended, regardless of channel, and the request is verified by calling the person back on the known number from the company directory. The number from the incoming call is never used for the callback.
2. A safe word: Management and the finance team agree on a safe word shared only face to face. It is requested for any urgent, verbal payment demand; no matter how realistic the imitated voice sounds, it does not have this information.
3. Dual approval and two-factor verification: Every payment above a defined threshold requires approval from two separate people, and two-factor verification stays enabled on banking and finance systems.
4. A waiting period for payment changes: Requests such as a supplier changing their account number are processed only after a verification window — for example, 24 hours — no matter how urgent they appear.
5. Regular drills: Awareness training should not end with a one-off presentation; run short scenario drills a few times a year so the team builds the "suspect, stop, verify" reflex.

Notice what these rules have in common: none of them tries to detect the deepfake. All of them make the process itself secure, no matter how good the imitation is.

If you encounter a suspicious situation

First, stop; do not take any action. End the conversation politely and reach the person on their known number. Notify your manager immediately, and your IT lead if you have one. Note the time of the call, the number used, and what was requested; this information is valuable both for the internal review and for any official report. Most importantly: suspecting something and being wrong is nothing to be ashamed of. A culture that allows "false alarms" pays for itself many times over the moment it stops a single real attack.

The bright side: detection tools are improving too

The picture may look dark, but there is another side to the coin: the same artificial intelligence is working on defense as well. AI-supported fraud detection has already earned its place among the recommended safeguards, and these tools keep improving. We covered the constructive side of AI for your business in our article on practical AI use cases for SMEs.

The real point is this: technology alone will not protect you, but combined with well-designed processes it forms a strong shield. Digitizing approval flows, adding dual controls to payment processes, and turning them into software is exactly what we do — take a look at our services and see how we have solved similar problems in our projects. If you would like to design a protection protocol that fits your company, reach us through our contact page — let's shine a light on the complexity together.