Trend Micro Stops Deepfakes and AI-Based Cyber Attacks for Consumers and Enterprises

POSTED BY: Lionell Go Macahilig
2024-08-03 12:43:28 PHT

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global cybersecurity leader, has announced new innovations in its enterprise platform focused on protecting all environments from the rapidly growing threat of AI-based attacks and fraud.

Trend Micro research shows that cybercriminals are catching on to the explosion of enterprise AI use, resulting in a dramatic increase in AI-based tools available on the criminal underground. These tools are cheaper and more accessible than ever, enabling criminals at any skill level to more easily launch attacks at scale that mislead victims for purposes of extortion, identity theft, fraud, or misinformation.

Ian Felipe, Trend Micro Philippines Country Manager: “Our latest research reveals several new deepfake tools that make it easy for cybercriminals at all skill levels to launch damaging scams, social engineering, and security bypass attempts. We are leading the industry in fighting back for both our enterprise and consumer customers with new capabilities to detect deepfakes and other forms of AI fraud. Like past shifts in the threat and IT landscape, we’ve seen the challenge of securing AI and risen to it.”

Detecting and defeating these AI-based methods is central to better managing attack surface risk for enterprises and lowering overall online risk for consumers—71% of whom, in a recent Trend Micro survey, viewed deepfakes negatively and believed that one of their top uses is for fraud.

Available soon in the Trend Vision One platform, the new deepfake detection technology will use a variety of advanced methods to spot AI-generated content.

According to Gartner analyst Dan Ayoub, “Readily available, high-quality GenAI applications are now capable of creating photo-realistic video content that can deceive or mislead an audience. Given the low barriers to entry in using these tools and their increasing sophistication, developing a methodological approach to detecting GenAI deepfake content has become necessary.”

Deepfakes pose a significant risk to modern enterprises and individuals. An undetected deepfake can lead to misleading information, financial impacts, job losses, legal challenges, reputation damage, identity theft, and potential harm to mental or physical health. In a recent Trend Micro study, 36% of consumers reported experiencing a scam attempt using a deepfake. The FBI has also previously warned of deepfake technology being used in conjunction with video calls to carry out business email compromise attacks, and to fraudulently apply for remote working positions.

This technology is not only being abused to bypass human verification but also biometric security measures like facial recognition. Trend Micro research has also revealed recent shifts indicating a growing preference for exploiting existing LLM models through innovative jailbreaking techniques rather than developing bespoke criminal AI tools.

The launch of Trend Micro’s new solutions is part of a company-wide mission to secure customers’ AI journey. Supporting a zero trust strategy, Trend Micro also recently released new features for Trend Vision One designed to:

  • Centralize management of employees’ GenAI access and usage
  • Inspect prompts to prevent data leaks and malicious injections
  • Filter GenAI content to meet compliance requirements
  • Defend against large language model (LLM) attacks

Trend Micro’s deepfake detection capabilities demo can be viewed here.