Curated from Latest from TechRadar US in News,opinion — Here’s what matters right now:
The interconnectedness of our digital world brings a wealth of benefits, including the ability to conduct tasks that were once manual with greater speed and convenience. At the same time, society faces an ever-expanding set of dangers, both personally and professionally, on a daily basis. For business executives in particular, the continually evolving threat landscape is now one where the lines between personal and professional, as well as digital and physical, are increasingly blurred. The latest findings from the Ponemon Institute underscore this new reality. Based on a survey of nearly 600 U.S. security professionals, Ponemon’s new 2025 Digital Executive Protection Report shows a notable increase in attacks targeting business leaders, with survey respondents reporting a rise from 43% in 2023 to 51% in 2025. A combination of factors is driving this trend: executives’ expansive digital footprints, combined with unmonitored and insecure home networks and personal devices, which are often used for work purposes. The Report also highlights a general lack of cybersecurity training and preparedness among companies to prevent such attacks. As a result, corporate executives are caught in a perfect storm, rich with opportunities for cybercriminals to cause financial and reputational harm – to leaders, their families, and their companies. The Escalating Risk of Deepfakes When examining the types of attacks targeting executives that cause the most harm, the Ponemon findings reveal an increase in deepfake impersonation attacks, from 34% of respondents reporting an incident in 2023 to 41% in 2025. Deepfakes are artificial images or videos created by AI, trained on a collection of authentic media samples of the individual being targeted, including still images, videos, and audio clips, all of which are easily found online. The more samples used, the more authentic the deepfake can appear to be. Given their highly visible public profiles and prolific social media activity, business executives, high-net-worth individuals, and their family members are easy targets. According to the Ponemon survey, the most common deepfakes experienced are impersonation of executives’ trusted entities and urgent demands for payments or information about a detected security breach. Of those targeted, 28% reported being impersonated by a trusted entity, such as a colleague, executive, family member, or known organization; 21% stated that executives and board members received urgent messages, including demands for immediate payment or information about a detected security breach. Additionally, 42% of respondents stated that their organizations’ executives and board members have been targeted an average of three times by a fake image, while 66% of respondents indicated that it is highly likely their executives will be targeted by a deepfake in the future. Survey respondents disclosed that the financial toll of deepfakes is neither known nor measured. However, most respondents cited
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Original reporting: Latest from TechRadar US in News,opinion