Gartner report: Deepfake audio and video attacks on the rise

A Gartner survey of cybersecurity leaders reveals a rise in social engineering attacks utilizing AI-generated deepfakes. According to the report, 41% of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) reported being targeted by audio deepfakes within the last 12 months, while 36% reported employees were targeted via deepfake video calls.

Craig Porter, a Director Analyst at Gartner, noted that attackers are increasingly combining phishing, business email compromise, and synthetic media with personal context across multiple channels. While AI increases the volume and credibility of these attacks, Porter emphasized that most incidents still rely on stolen credentials, weak recovery processes, and human deception.

To combat these threats, Gartner recommends that organizations shift from teaching employees to ‘spot the fake’ toward establishing secure verification as a standard behavior for high-stakes requests. Recommended defenses include using workforce simulations to test reporting behaviors, implementing phishing-resistant authentication for high-value workflows, and updating incident response playbooks to account for multimodal impersonation.