NEW DELHI — Deepfake-enabled fraud is emerging as a major cybersecurity threat for Indian financial institutions, with artificial intelligence being used to impersonate executives, customers and relationship managers, according to a new report.
Seqrite, the enterprise security arm of Quick Heal Technologies Ltd., said AI-driven impersonation attacks using synthetic voice, video and identity manipulation are increasingly capable of bypassing traditional verification systems.
The report said attackers can mimic executives, relationship managers or customers with high accuracy, enabling fraudulent authorizations, account takeovers and real-time payment manipulation.
Such attacks are especially effective in financial environments where fast transaction processing can sometimes take priority over deeper verification, the report said.
Seqrite said it recorded more than 265.52 million detections across more than 8 million endpoints between October 2024 and September 2025, averaging 505 detections every minute.
Trojans accounted for about 43% of detections, while file infectors made up about 35%. The report said many campaigns relied on social engineering and identity deception to initiate compromise.
Financial institutions rely heavily on trust-based interactions among customers, vendors and internal systems. Deepfake-based fraud exploits that trust by embedding itself within legitimate communication channels, including calls, video verifications and approval workflows, making detection more difficult.
The report said the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, requires financial institutions to protect personal data and ensure secure processing across digital interactions. A breach involving deepfakes could lead to unauthorized access, identity misuse, compliance violations, regulatory penalties and reputational damage.
Seqrite urged financial institutions to move away from static identity verification and adopt more dynamic, behavior-based validation.
The report said institutions should strengthen multi-layered authentication, use anomaly detection across transaction flows and monitor communication channels for signs of manipulation.
Seqrite warned that the next wave of cyberthreats will be increasingly AI-driven, adaptive and capable of bypassing conventional security controls. (Source: IANS)
