CyberWire Daily When zero-days escape the lab.
Mar 4, 2026
Brian Long, CEO and co-founder of Adaptive Security, explains how AI is changing social engineering and impersonation. He walks through rising phishing and deepfake trends, the shift toward internal impersonation attacks, and why defenders face alert fatigue. He also discusses gaps across email, calls, and video and recommends identity habits and verification steps to counter AI-enabled fraud.
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AI Supercharges Social Engineering
- AI has multiplied both the sophistication and volume of social engineering attacks, driving a 4x rise in phishing and massive growth in deepfakes.
- Brian Long cites cheap local LLMs and 2M models on Hugging Face as enablers and reports deepfakes grew 17x from 2023–2024.
Impersonation Targets Midlevel Employees
- Impersonation attacks now target mid-level roles with contextual detail, not just flashy CEO scams.
- Brian Long describes attackers mimicking controllers or CFOs using voice, likeness, and internal knowledge to request actions.
Alert Fatigue Hinders Response To New Threats
- Security teams face alert overload and tool sprawl, reducing capacity to track new AI-enabled threats.
- Brian Long notes defenders often manage 50+ tools and thousands of alerts daily, creating resourcing shortages.