Why Are Deepfakes a Major Cyberthreat for CFOs?

Deepfakes were a passing fad on the internet a few years ago, with humorous yet unsettling videos circulating on social media. However, by 2025, they will be one of the most serious dangers to financial crime for companies globally. Cybercriminals can no longer rely solely on brute force attacks and phishing emails. They’ve devised a much more efficient approach to act as business executives and dupe finance teams into sending millions of dollars by employing AI-generated faces and even live video avatars. The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is the only person at the heart of the hurricane.

However, what makes CFOs the most susceptible to cyberattacks? because they are in charge of high-value transactions, financial procedures, and payments. By pretending to be a CFO or someone in their network, scammers can gain the two elements that make them successful: urgency and authority. Convincing a finance team to approve a move is frighteningly easy with these two. The ramifications are astounding. For CFOs, this is an assault on their own company’s capital, not just another cybersecurity catchphrase.

Fraud Using Deepfakes and Increasing Spending

Deepfakes’ financial impact has progressed from startling to disastrous. According to recent research, deepfake fraud is not just speculative—it is actually resulting in large financial losses.

This trend will not be slowed down. According to a World Economic Forum report, over 500,000 deepfake files were already online by 2023; by 2025, that figure is expected to rise to over 8 million. This indicates to CFOs that the volume and development of risks are increasing at a quick pace.

Currently, 6.5% of all fraud activity globally is deepfake. This number is probably going to rise quickly as generative AI tools become more widely available. Because of this rise, CFOs must be ready for highly coordinated AI-based fraud campaigns as opposed to isolated phishing attempts.

What Are the Main Reasons Behind Deepfake Attacks on CFOs?

CFOs and their companies are responsible for managing the treasury, liquidity, and vendor payments. 

Power and Governance: CFOs approve payments, supervise financial operations, and keep an eye on vendor contracts. Finance teams may be duped by a CFO impersonator or an insider posing as a CFO into confirming fraudulent transactions.

Public Visibility: They typically take part in TV broadcasts, earnings calls, conventions, and video interviews. Because their voices, features, and behaviours are typically encountered in public settings, they make ideal AI training material.

The Unspoken Dangers and Chance Costs: Most businesses believe that IT-managed security technologies or rules are sufficient; however, fraud via friendly internal sources, such as the finance head’s video chat, can get past standard defences.

Issues with Compliance and Reputation That Are Not Always Financial 

Although financial loss is the most obvious risk, CFOs usually have to deal with more serious and long-term hidden risks. Daily operations, compliance, and reputation are all at risk, and the costs of recovery are higher than the initial fraud loss. Here’s a synopsis:

The Toolbox of the CFO to Combat Deepfakes

• CFOs must now become both financial stewards and digital risk managers. They must strategically collaborate with chief risk officers to strengthen enterprise-wide defences and infuse resilience into financial systems. The finance function must incorporate fraud analytics, cybersecurity, and AI literacy in order to safeguard funds. Some security precautions against deepfakes are listed below:
• Putting Biometric and Multi-factor Authentication into Practice: The best defence is to combine biometric authentication with multi-factor authentication (MFA). Deepfake impersonation is much more difficult to accomplish with liveness detection, which includes multimodal testing such as facial expression, speech coherence, and behavioural indicators, as well as passive liveness, which detects subtle signals like texture, lighting reflection, or micro-movements without user intervention, and active liveness, which requires user cooperation such as blinking, smiling, or following on-screen prompts.
•  Training Finance Teams: One important security precaution is awareness. Organizations can lessen their vulnerability to scammers by teaching finance departments to recognize warning signs such as odd demands, changed voice tones, or irregularities in video calls. Role-playing games and tabletop exercises improve team readiness for actual deepfake attacks. 
• Enhancing CFO-CISO Cooperation: Preventing deepfake fraud is a component of financial security, not only an IT problem. Companies should close possible gaps that threat actors could exploit by ensuring that cybersecurity controls and financial processes operate together through the establishment of structured communication between CSIOs and CFOs.
• Perform Risk Audits Based on Scenarios:  During risk audits, regular scenario planning enables organisations to model fraud efforts driven by deepfakes. By highlighting places where more authentication controls are required and exposing weak approval workflows, these simulations improve overall fraud resilience.
• Using AI-Powered Tools for Monitoring and Detection: Modern defences must meet modern dangers. Organisations can detect deepfakes in real time with the aid of AI-powered solutions like synthetic media detection, forensic video analysis, biometric verification, and transaction flow monitoring. By incorporating these technologies into financial risk management plans, CFOs may guarantee preemptive defence as opposed to reactive damage control.

Why Are Deepfake Threats Growing Rapidly?

2025 is a crucial year for CFOs dealing with deepfakes for three reasons:

Accessibility of AI Tools:  Since open-source AI models are now readily accessible, scammers may now produce realistic deepfakes without the requirement for technical know-how.  No longer limited to elite labs, impersonations can now be produced on a large scale by a well-funded criminal organization.

Escalation of Attacks: Attacks that target corporate security on a large scale are moving from experimental to systemic threats.

Regulatory Pressure: As governments throughout the world write deepfake legislation, fraud detection is becoming essential to comply with. In the US, EU, and Asia, laws and norms are starting to mandate risk reporting, disclosure, and identity verification, particularly for obligated sectors. 

CFOs who ignore deepfake concerns expose their organizations to regulatory scrutiny, financial loss, and harm to their brand, even if they are not legally obligated.

How Facia is A Strategic Ally in the Age of Deepfakes?

• A new era of fraud is being ushered in by the advent of deepfakes, in which hearing and seeing are no longer considered to be believing. When billions of dollars are at stake, CFOs cannot afford to take a reactive stance. 
• Deepfake attack vectors are becoming more prevalent; in e-meetings, CFOs might be impersonated to authorise fraudulent transactions. Weak liveness checks expose executives to presentation and injection attacks, even with facial biometric MFA. Financial institutions need to use forensic verification and enhanced liveness detection to bolster MFA.

Facia offers a thorough defence designed to address these changing financial threats. 

Liveness detection for Authentication: Facia provides high-level security to the banks and other financial service providers, including biometric real-time verification and sophisticated liveness checks into high-risk procedures, including online onboarding, e-meetings, and mobile banking transactions, by ensuring that the person requesting approvals or money transfer is authentic and not a fake. This shields the organization from injection and presentation attacks. 

• High-Quality Forensic Deepfake Identification: Facia deepfake identification of forensic quality goes beyond standard verification. Particularly in high-stakes video calls, this degree of inspection guarantees that CFOs and leadership teams can rely on the integrity of distant interactions.
• Accuracy and adherence to the rules: It facilitates governance and organizations by providing accuracy benchmarks evaluated against datasets such as Deepfake Detection Challenges (DFDC). This guarantees reliable, legally compliant fraud prevention.
•  Facia safeguards both money and reputation by integrating biometric verification with deepfake detection. [Ask for a Demo]