Anyone who uses email knows about phishing. A message arrives, seemingly harmless, asking for a password or a quick action. Before you realise it, you’ve been hooked and the damage is done. But in the fast-moving world of cybercrime, email phishing is already yesterday’s problem.
Today, an estimated 65 per cent of business communication takes place outside email, on platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, WhatsApp, Slack and CRM systems. The battleground has shifted; scams are precise, patient and increasingly indistinguishable from reality.
Tel Aviv-based Cyvore describes itself as a pioneer in “workspace security” – safeguarding clients from new attacks via social media and video conferencing, plus old-school email phishing.
CEO Ori Segal spent seven years at Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. His team includes veterans of the IDF’s elite 8200 elite signals intelligence and experts behind the 2024 Hezbollah pager attacks.
They started from scratch in 2022, building their own systems to counter the emerging threats – and in some cases to detect them before they’re even launched.
They use Optical Phishing Recognition (OPR) to analyse wording, links, files, pictures, video for suspicious inconsistencies that our eyes and brains miss, like Microsoft logo colours that aren’t quite right.
It also trawls the dark web and beyond, looking for evidence of attacks that are being planned – but haven’t yet happened – to provide clients with advance warning.
And it addresses the biggest vulnerability of all – human behaviour. We are the weakest link in any security situation, because we can be psychologically manipulated.
Segal cites a dramatic example. In January 2024, an employee at Arup, the London-based design, engineering and architecture company, joined a seemingly routine Zoom call with a team of colleagues in Hong Kong and approved a £20 million transfer.
It was only later that they realised everyone on the call was a deepfake, and the money had disappeared.
“Back then, it would have cost them $1million to do that,” says Segal. “Today, it would cost them something like $200,000. In a few months, it’ll cost $50,000.
"And in a year from now, you will be able to take your credit card, put it in the web, pay maybe $10 and get a full deepfake.”
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