In the Media: Jason D'Souza host of All Points West speaks with Steven Pellerin

What would you say are your biggest cybersecurity concerns when you take stock of the landscape right now?

Today, the speed and breadth at which AI is accelerating the fraud that we're seeing, the deepfakes, The voice impersonation, that scale and scope is getting harder and harder for the average user to decipher what's synthetic versus what is an authentic email or person or request.

And so given exactly that, both the speed and scale at which it's becoming so sophisticated, how can the average person best protect themselves?

Well, this is the shameless plug where I'll say that building your local community connections is helpful in terms of our organization.

Having somebody on a back channel, whether it be a Slack channel or whatnot, for us to talk amongst ourselves is helpful because getting that second set of eyes is very helpful.

Now, what I want to say to the average person out there, involve your community as well.

So that can be a teacher, a parent.

You need to ask and pause and think about what you're being presented with and the truthfulness of it.

So really building awareness and talking amongst your friends.

I've had two very recent experiences.

individuals that we've dealt with both professionally and through volunteer.

And unfortunately, Their bank account was breached, and that was an absolutely heartbreaking situation that they found themselves in.

And it was because through social engineering, they were pressured to act fast.

There was a problem with your bank account.

Click here, and next thing you know, a threat actor has gone in and exfiltrated funds.

And that's something we often hear with these scams, right? That they play on your emotions on top of using the available technology, the evolving technology.

What would you say are your biggest cybersecurity concerns when you take stock of the landscape right now?

Today, the speed and breadth at which AI is accelerating the fraud that we're seeing, the deepfakes, The voice impersonation, that scale and scope is getting harder and harder for the average user to decipher what's synthetic versus what is an authentic email or person or request.

And so given exactly that, both the speed and scale at which it's becoming so sophisticated, how can the average person best protect themselves?

Well, this is the shameless plug where I'll say that building your local community connections is helpful in terms of our organization.

Having somebody on a back channel, whether it be a Slack channel or whatnot, for us to talk amongst ourselves is helpful because getting that second set of eyes is very helpful.

Now, what I want to say to the average person out there, involve your community as well.

So that can be a teacher, a parent.

You need to ask and pause and think about what you're being presented with and the truthfulness of it.

So really building awareness and talking amongst your friends.

I've had two very recent experiences.

individuals that we've dealt with both professionally and through volunteer.

And unfortunately, Their bank account was breached, and that was an absolutely heartbreaking situation that they found themselves in.

And it was because through social engineering, they were pressured to act fast.

There was a problem with your bank account.

Click here, and next thing you know, a threat actor has gone in and exfiltrated funds.

And that's something we often hear with these scams, right? That they play on your emotions on top of using the available technology, the evolving technology.