Latest / Fractional Frequency / When Nothing Online Is What It Seems: AI, Fraud & the Future of Trust with Shlomi Beer
Transcript
- Jenna Ferrua: Shlomi Beer is the co founder and CEO of Impersonality, the AI powered cybersecurity platform helping global brands like Booking.com, Calvin Klein, Etsy, and Pandora fight impersonation fraud. A second time founder with a successful exit, Shlomi brings deep expertise in AI, data, and threat detection, building systems that evolve as fast as the threats they Stop. Very impressive, and I'm so excited to talk to you today to hear more about what you have been able to achieve. And I guess we can start with: what did you see, you know, in the market that you that you felt like there definitely needs to be a company that needs to be built here? Like, was there a specific problem, incident, or trend that led you to ImpersonAlly Shlomi Beer: first thanks for having me. yeah, there there were a couple of things, but I think the the the most notorious part is that and probably every one of us is experiencing it. It's you're getting much more fake emails, right? i it's everywhere, right? And and almost with the in the last two years I would say, with all this AI boom, the internet has become something that is really not safe, right? And and really hard to to trust. So I had a we we had an episode in the in the family, right? My wife was kind of buying some shoes from a from a store and she landed a a fake store. And she ended up buying, I mean paying for for some shoes that never came. Then she showed me that I thought it okay was a complete fake website of a very well known I think was Adidas, if I remember correctly. And Jenna Ferrua: Mm-hmm. Shlomi Beer: and yeah, she's being scammed, she's quite savvy, right? And then that that's where we thought, okay, this is not gonna stop, right? It's just going to be larger and larger as a problem. then the trust thing, right? The ability of almost anyone to create, yeah, fake copies, impersonation. And that's kind of what made us, yeah, say, okay, that's a big thing. Let's start to to see what we can help to stop it, at least in on some part of it. Yeah. Jenna Ferrua: Yeah. Man, that's so unfortunate because I love Adidas. I wear all the shoes all the time. So to have it happen, Shlomi Beer: Yeah. Jenna Ferrua: you know, to things that you love. So besides Yeah Totally. No. Totally. Shlomi Beer: Mm. Well, I mean it th th they're not the only ones, right? The the just it's happening to almost e everyone right now, yeah. Jenna Ferrua: is happening. And I guess that leads to, you know, understand that that, you know, incident happened with, you know, your wife, but I guess when when did you notice that you know, impersonation fraud was becoming, you know, a much bigger problem than just like fake websites, right? Or ads? What were those like early signals that you really started to to detect? Shlomi Beer: so we I mean at the beginning we started this was twenty twenty four. We started monitoring a little bit the activity of different brands. and then we started seeing this appearing more and more on the brands that we covered. I remember we did an initial experiment. I think we picked like eighty brands, we monitored all of them and I think it came like seventy percent. We we saw some kind of scam or fraud being run on their names. so we said okay that that's pretty significant. of course we did it on like very well known brands. but since then we also see that expanding right and expanding more and more on like medium size even smaller brands. so we started like that, right? Did that small experiment. Then basically it was more the belief that understanding the power of AI can do, right? And the initial starting point of that experiment that let us say, okay it's just going to be larger and larger, right? So that was the combination of those two things. and since then, I mean we are seeing it growing not only like but expanding the the different companies right that this involves but also the sophistication within one single company, right? The different methods, as we as we're working with more and more companies, right? So we can see the time that you kind of stop one type of them, right, then they will change and they will evolve and and you will see new stuff, right? So also in that perspective, we are seeing a lot of sophistication, I would say, in in how all these frauds are are evolving in the last two years, yeah. Jenna Ferrua: Yeah, and I'm sure the speed at which it's evolving is probably increasing also due to like the AI efficiencies as well, right? So things are just happening much faster. so on that note, before we dig into a little bit more of like the threat landscape, I mentioned it in the intro just regarding that this is your second company that you are, you know, a founder of. what are you taking from your previous company, right, and experiences and how is it impacting you today with your current company? Shlomi Beer: Yeah. interesting question. basically because what everything we Jenna Ferrua: Ha ha ha. Shlomi Beer: build on the previous company is kind of now obsolete because of everything Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: that has changed, right? But no, but but again, you you Jenna Ferrua: Yeah, that's interesting. Shlomi Beer: yeah. But you you you still learn a lot, I mean, regarding to people, right? And priorities and and how to manage things. of course, hiring, right? And you know, all all that is still is still relevant, but I mean the actual product might not might not be right as as many others as well. so what we took I think the main thing it's we did many mistakes on the on the first one. and Amy Crook: It's normal. Shlomi Beer: yeah that's cool and normal also doing a lot now but I think One one of the important things, of course, it's related to the people side. So one thing that we do in the new one, it's we made it a hundred percent from office, right? Kind of a little bit was against this was like two and a half years back, right? But still people were l working a lot remote. We said no, we are Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: still very young, we wanna be from office. We saw a lot of advantages on that. That is kind of counterintuitive that made us lose some people, right? Or not hire people that they were looking like for more hybrid roles or or remote. but but we we stick to it. it seems like trends are now coming back to that in general a little bit. so that was one kind of concrete thing. the other thing it's more about I could say responsibilities, right? you separate the responsibilities between different roles, right? And make them completely autonomous, right? And self sufficient. Jenna Ferrua: Mm mm. Yeah. Shlomi Beer: that that is really that kind of I personally learned the hard way from my previous company and And has been working much better now. Amy Crook: Yeah, there's so many lessons that you learn when you're doing something for the first time that I think you just have to learn. you know, and in terms of company culture for what the organization looks like that you're building, Jenna Ferrua: Mm-hmm. Amy Crook: those are personal decisions, like we're gonna have an in-office culture where, you know, it builds around you and your vision for the type of organization that you wanna work in. it's a lot of responsibility and you don't always know if you're making the right call because you know, with in office culture is great, but like you said, there's talent that you perhaps couldn't have attracted because you didn't have a remote offering. And it's like you have to just live with that. And that's just a very tiny part of all of the decisions that people make who run their own business. So I can totally empathize with With your comments around mistakes, as well as, you know, learning what actually works for you. and the people around you have similar types of motivations. That's really important. this is a subject that's near and dear to my heart. As a fractional talent officer, I spend a lot of time in systems that have a lot of fake candidates. so fraud detection, in the age of AI is is, you know, constantly something I think about because it's such a waste of time and resources to go through this process with people. and obviously the benefit for them is that they're a fake candidate, but they're trying to get a job that pays a significant amount of money. And so they're fraudulently trying to get this money out of the company. so that is one element of fraud that I'm really familiar with today. We discussed also the fake stores that you think you're making a purchase of a reputable product and then it turns out that it was a complete dummy website and that you've sent your money to someone else. What else are people not seeing about the threat of fraud in today's technology landscape? What do you think people don't know that they should be aware of? Shlomi Beer: well we can start now and then tomorrow. one of the the Jenna Ferrua: Ha ha Shlomi Beer: when you're in this industry you end being very paranoid of everything, right? So Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: yeah almost you won't trust your own yeah your own family, right? Everything can be a fraud and you know today it's it's Amy Crook: ha ha Shlomi Beer: It's extremely sophisticated. But but I think what what one trend that I think people need to be aware. the fact that for example, I guess that you all have have used some free tools online, let's say like a PDF editor or some tax form, something to do small things, right? You need to separate a couple of pages from a document, you know, you just search online. and use it. So one trend we're seeing, a lot of these fraudsters are uploading these kind of tools now online, which they will do what they claim, right? For example, if there is an a PDF editor, they will you want to separate pages, they will do that. But at the same time they will scan all of your documents, right? And keep that information. and now that you know they can convert almost any text, any scanned quality into text. And then they use that for automated attacks. Let's say you're scanning I don't know, whatever, a contract, or you're scanning whatever it is. documents with a lot of personal information and very confidential information. You just say, okay, we're just splitting pages, right? that information goes somewhere and then an email will land on your on your inbox with exactly that information. For you, it's almost impossible to detect that. I mean, it's everything you expect, right? You expect an email from this person Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: with this information. and then they can infect your computer. there are different attack vectors from there, but it's almost impossible to stop because of that initial usage of that free tool, right? and that disconnection Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: between that initial usage and stalling the details. And then that email, right, for example, can be a week, can be a couple of days. So you're not connecting the dots and and that's really, really hard to stop, right? today. So what what I Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: would recommend to everyone, yeah, just don't use anything free online unless you really know the source of it. Amy Crook: good advice. Shlomi Beer: Yeah. Amy Crook: you mentioned that AI has enabled these fraudsters to be more sophisticated. What are you seeing now that just wasn't possible a few years ago? Shlomi Beer: that example that just mentioned is it's just one, right? But also the ability to now that create perfect copies if we're talking about the previous example, like the fake stores, right? you even can know on the emails, right? on the fake emails. In the past you used to Find Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: like small details, right? They were like a sign, they were not perfect Amy Crook: yeah. Shlomi Beer: English. there were some signs, you know, it wasn't perfect, right? now it's perfect, right? and can be done in scale, very, very cheap. so that's the big difference, right? So it's it's not just Perfect than design wise, right? and detail wise and also in scale and chip. Amy Crook: Yeah, no, it's true. Everything everything looks everything looks real and everything looks fake. So it's like, what is real? What is fake? Like it's so difficult Shlomi Beer: Mm-hmm. Amy Crook: to make that call these days. And they're moving so fast and the capabilities are so so good. How do you build a cybersecurity company when you're solving a problem that changes Every week. Shlomi Beer: Yeah. That is indeed one of our biggest challenges, right? Keeping up with with with the pace, right, and and the sophistication. the the bad actors move, right? So it's kind of a yeah, a cop game, right? So we need to To look after the bad guys, right? And and they change their methods. Once we we have kind of found that what they are doing, they are changing it, right? so it's a constant. Oh we have a very active research team. and sometimes that's the more exciting parts that you know, even myself as a CEO, we're detecting a new thing and we know. They're trying some new techniques we can just keep up all night, right? Trying to find out and understand what they're doing, right? that's still the parts that I enjoy the most, it's kind of reinvent yourself almost every couple of months. so it's very it's very cool, but it's very challenging. I think that's how it is right now. it's part of the industry and the game that we are playing, right? one thing that we have learned for that is sometimes thrusters try to approach us in order to learn from what we are doing. And at Amy Crook: yeah. Shlomi Beer: the beginning we used to kind of refuse that interaction much more, but now we are kind of trying to learn from them as well, right? And so we, sometimes can find those in conferences that we attend and you have some science to understand from what they ask, right? That they're doing some other things. So we just don't, you try to be to learn as much as you can, right? From those interactions as well. And I can tell without going too much detail because I don't wanna tell a lot of details of our techniques. But yeah yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, one one thing that we learned, right? Sometimes it Amy Crook: Yeah, you don't wanna give your secrets away. Yeah. Jenna Ferrua: So then the hackers will hear the secret. Yeah. Yes. Well Yeah. Shlomi Beer: it's not I mean the vision of most people is like okay, there is a hacker right somewhere in a garage or running some code in the dark. Sometimes we have found those are like very big organizations running with tens or hundreds of employees, running scams that they I mean they treat that as a spure revenue, right? so I was surprised, I can tell, right, by the size and the operations they have, like truly companies, right? and that was quite surprising. But then it also gives you Once you learn, for example, a little bit of the how they operate, you can reach also some of their yeah, some of different parts and try to learn what they are doing, right? So that has helped us to keep up, right, on that research and and and keep improving as well. Jenna Ferrua: Well well on that note though on you know employees and companies, you know, what what what needs to happen inside a company like beyond just having the technology? Like what what advice would you have for companies of what they need to do to ensure that they're being protected? Real real protection, right? Shlomi Beer: that's on different levels. So the protection can come in like really multiple and different levels. by the way, we as a company as ImpersonAlly we help the brands and not the consumers, right? we see the problems that you know, I mentioned, like my wife would have or that person that uploads a PDF, right? But we don't protect the the end user, right? we help tackle specific fraud that will basically hurt revenues on companies, right? So those are like a subset of these problems. that's our Jenna Ferrua: Okay. Shlomi Beer: currently focus and what we're dealing with. the problem in general it's way bigger, right? And the and they're like, you know, it's a multi billion dollar industry and security on different levels. so we said about technology, so you ask okay what else beyond right tools and technology. I think Jenna Ferrua: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: there is something fundamental that changed right and and this how you trust things, right? what one thing that we we also deal in some way also it's you were mentioning, Amy, about the like fake candidates, right? or for example, or fake people into a conversation like we have now, right? So how you spot someone which is fake. Now you you can you can try to find distortions on the video, on the audio, or you can control And check the identity of everyone that that joins this conversation, right? So those are different levels. I believe that the level of checking the identity and doing it in on the identity level will be the one that prevails at the end. but also depends on the scenario, right? so I think it's a combination. that the understanding that a a potential threat can be in in every place, right? it's something that it's a change. it's kind of a fundamental change that people will need to get used to. Jenna Ferrua: Get used to. Well, Shlomi Beer: Mm-hmm. Jenna Ferrua: I don't know how much you can talk about this, perhaps, but I know that, you know, you are working on things now where you're able to detect like the AI generated voices, right, in the fraudulent calls. Are you able to share how close we are, you know, to being able to track this or identify this type of fraud in real time? Shlomi Beer: So if we're talking yeah, for example of taking a a piece of audio, right, from someone and then generating their voice in real time, right, by someone else, right? So it's like a a deep fake. Jenna Ferrua: Mm-hmm. Shlomi Beer: I think it that that's that's already there. I think it's a bit expensive now to do that in real time. Probably Jenna Ferrua: Mm-hmm. Shlomi Beer: I think in a couple of months or yeah, one, two years, it will come to be relatively cheap in real time. right now it's expensive to do in real time, right? With good quality. But the technology exists. if it's not real time, it's much cheaper. But yeah that's the the easy kind of answer, right? of course Jenna Ferrua: Ha. Shlomi Beer: you have you have the Chinese models, they will do it cheaper and their quality is quite good. We're seeing a lot of that as well. so if you try to do that, for example, with with your known model like your Chat GPT or Gemini, today they have guardrails to not allow you to do that, especially with Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: like public figure voices, right? Or deep fakes from from like, you know, public people, like actors or politicians. but you can go to any Chinese model and they would do that. Yeah. But again the the question there, that's what I was mentioning, whether the Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: real solution to detecting that it's doing that real time you would need to do something else, right? So for example, banks that have trusted that kind of biometric identification method, they will need to add like other Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: multi factor kind of biometric identification and not rely on one, right? Because that's becoming completely non reliable. Definitely. Jenna Ferrua: It's like everything that is a protection in place is just immediately like obsolete, it feels like, you know, within like two months or so, somewhat, right? Like what we use to protect us is no longer a viable source. So man, I guess, let's look ahead like into three to five years potentially. What do you think like the the new threats are gonna be? What is it that's going to be, the big concern? Shlomi Beer: five years is like it's too far away, yeah, to be honest. But you Jenna Ferrua: That's fair. Shlomi Beer: I mean, so we have all the all the robot protection, right? That it's probably coming, right? Jenna Ferrua: Mm-hmm. Shlomi Beer: I know how yeah, how that will be evolving, right? But we're seeing robots, right, of different forms, like humanoid robots, but also like a lot of household robots, right? in and also a lot of house machines being adding like more capability and connecting them to internet right and AI capabilities. So a lot Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: of issues will come there and protection that will need to be added. Probably w what what again, this is just my guess, right? there will be some movement of just disconnecting, I think, because of all the threads so people will try to disconnect a little bit themselves from the internet. Amy Crook: yeah. Yeah. Jenna Ferrua: Mm-hmm. Shlomi Beer: I believe. But but that's just my personal thought, right? the world is definitely going on the other direction, right? But I think it's a little bit like people they keep some cash in their houses, right? Then they don't put everything on the bank, right? Still people do that and you will be amazed on the scope of that. I think one of the things that overwhelms everyone, including myself, is like the pace that everything evolves, right? So it's really it's really quick. Amy Crook: I think this has just been so informative and helpful. I think, you know, I see it in a small section of my world. Everybody's experienced some kind of, fraud. And for businesses, it's such a huge financial burden to deal with these fraudulent actors. So I guess I'd like if we could just Leave our listeners of many of them are founders, CEOs, business owners, or people that work in positions of protection for the company. And so what is your parting advice that you would give to people to stay focused on or stay aware of or just stay informed about? Shlomi Beer: it's difficult one, but I I think try to read and be like informed of new trends. I think you don't know what you don't know, right? that's that's especially because things really, as we said, are evolving really quick. I think it's a matter also all these changes are helping right also spot these new things, right? there are a lot of tools out there that will help monitor, and flag unusual activities, right? in in different assets, especially if you have a company and try to protect your assets, or the company assets. So the there are a lot of disruption being done, right? A lot of tools, including ours, right? we take a a fraction of that space. But basically we're also leveraging a lot of our AI agents to to understand that and things that were not possible right a couple of years back. I think being really informed, right? out there, right? Because just because things change quick, I think that's the more important for today. Like being open to change. I think that the the these are the people that will succeed. that's one of the things that I really like about our people as well, right? being open to change. everything changes really quick, so Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: you cannot get used or get in love to anything that you're doing or frameworks or tools or whatever work that you have personally done, you need to be able to ditch everything out and and move on, right? So that's my Amy Crook: Yeah. Shlomi Beer: personal advice. Yeah. Amy Crook: Yeah. Absolutely. And I guess finally, where can people find you? Where can they connect with you? company website, all that information. Shlomi Beer: Yeah, so we are ImpersonAlly so we are your ally against impersonation. So basically impersonally.io, LinkedIn, Amy Crook: Yeah, we can Shlomi Beer: our website. We are there. we help companies basically check, understand, and solve everyone that is pretending to be them online, right? So if you're a company and you want to know and check if someone is pretending to be you using your assets or in different ways, right? It can be from the more severe to the more like little legal compliance issues. They are using, let's say, your logos, your products, etc. that that's what our platform does. It will basically scan all the internet for that, map everything, then divide depending on different types of fraud. So there are like right now we cover more than ten different types of fraud that are done on in different ways. And then for each one of them we have like different resolutions, right? So you can resolve them and basically track how resolution is going and and actually link to to the results. So If you experience or or know a lot of people they will they will find like some examples online, right? They will just do or their customers will send them or they will get complaints. So that they already know some indication that something is going on, right? so if you wanna check, we have a a free tool online on our website that you can put your domain and get like a free check online. Amy Crook: Yeah, go check that out, everybody. Go make go make sure you're safe. Check yourself out immediately. Jenna Ferrua: Yes, yes. Amy Crook: And the give them the website address again, Shlomi and I'll also link it. Shlomi Beer: Yeah, so it's ImpersonAlly.io Amy Crook: fellow.ioas. All right. Jenna Ferrua: Yes. Amy Crook: Well, it was great to chat with you. Shlomi Beer: Yeah, thank you very much as well. very informative and hopefully we help the audience, yeah, n learn a little bit more about the threats. Amy Crook: I'm sure. Stay vigilant everyone. The fraud the fraudsters are working overtime. Okay, thanks everybody. Jenna Ferrua: Yes. Beware. Yes. Thank you so much, Shlomi