CISOs spend their careers defending critical infrastructure and sensitive data against the world’s most sophisticated adversaries.
Their mandate is clear: Keep the company protected from threats. But the playing field looks vastly different from what it did just a few years ago. The perimeter is the people, and the adversaries are armed with generative AI.
We spoke with the CISO of a global law firm about the rapidly evolving threat landscape, the unique risks facing high-visibility organizations, and why they rely on Doppel as a critical cybersecurity partner.
When Trusting Your Eyes & Ears Fails
Security leaders view the sheer velocity of today’s attacks as a primary concern.
“In many ways, AI is making a CISO’s job harder. The attacks come faster, and they contain nuances out there that people normally wouldn’t be able to spot,” the CISO explains. AI can identify legacy vulnerabilities and produce exploitable code in minutes.
But the most alarming shift is in how AI is supercharging social engineering. Threat actors aren’t relying on poorly worded phishing emails. They’re launching highly orchestrated campaigns designed to manipulate human psychology.
“A multi-vector attack is probably one of the scariest things,” they note. They describe a recurring pattern where an attacker begins by establishing trust on a platform like LinkedIn, shifts the conversation to a video call, and eventually moves to a direct phone line to forge a personal connection.
The entire interaction is an illusion designed for financial extortion or corporate infiltration, and the realism of these attacks is staggering, particularly when it comes to synthetic media.
The CISO has witnessed the evolution of voice phishing, or vishing, firsthand. While early AI voice clones lacked character and were easy to spot, the technology has crossed the ‘uncanny valley.’
“With new AI capabilities, within 15 seconds, attackers mimic the voice a lot better than they ever could before,” they warn. “I think that’s where AI’s real risk lies: AI avatars, the deepfake voices, being able to set up Zoom calls, and fake meetings.”
When an attacker can perfectly clone an executive's voice in seconds, traditional verification protocols collapse.
High-Trust Organizations’ Unique Risk
AI-driven social engineering is a threat to every industry, but it poses a unique existential risk to sectors built entirely on reputation, like the law firm that this CISO works for.
The firm has built a powerful, trusted brand over more than 100 years. “Trust is key. You build great customers by getting people to trust you, and you do it repetitively,” the CISO emphasizes.
However, the visibility required to build that trust makes the firm’s partners prime targets.
To attract clients, lawyers need a public presence, but that exposure is easily weaponized. “The bigger your law firm gets and the more reputable you are, the easier it is for someone to sort of ‘double’ you,” they say.
Attackers scrape photos and videos from corporate websites, capture 15 seconds of audio from a conference speech, and instantly create a digital replica to defraud victims or solicit fake employment. And when an attack happens, adversaries might even target an individual’s family or loved ones.
To protect the firm’s reputation and its people, the CISO knew they needed a partner that operated at the speed of the adversary.
Doppel’s Difference: Speed, Scale, and Trust
When evaluating partners for digital risk protection (DRP), the firm needed a partner that could identify threats across the social space, from fake domains to malicious social media posts and messages, and dismantle them immediately.
Doppel’s takedown speeds caught the CISO’s attention.
“The industry average for takedowns is anywhere between 30 and 45 days,” they point out. Waiting a month to remove a spoofed domain or a fake executive profile equates to a month of brand damage and compounding risk.
“With Doppel, we’re seeing takedowns in seven days,” the CISO says. “Doppel does exactly what they say they do.”
Doppel provided the team with the massive scale needed to monitor a fractured digital landscape. Manually tracking threats across domains, social media, and messaging apps is impossible for any security team.
“A multi-channel coverage capability is equivalent to having a 12- or 18-person team that performs for you 24/7, 365 days a year,” the executive explains. “It saves you hours in the day, and because it looks at all these channels simultaneously, you’re effecting change a lot faster.”
Empowering Employees Through PII Removal
One of the most impactful ways the CISO has leveraged Doppel is by using its capabilities to remove personally identifiable information (PII).
By actively removing the personal data of the firm’s lawyers from data brokers and public sites, the security team shrinks the attack surface available to cybercriminals.
Before Doppel, removing PII was a rigorous, time-consuming process that placed a heavy burden on the individual lawyers. They had to manually contact companies or social platforms to request removals.
“Today with Doppel, it could take minutes, and that speed of us being able to affect change gives a sense of safety and trust,” they say. “It makes everyone want to be more loyal to the firm.”
A Partnership Built on Social Engineering Defense
CISOs know that the ultimate metric of success isn’t just the number of social engineering attacks thwarted. It’s the operational peace of mind that the business gains.
Doppel has allowed the CISO to focus on high-level strategic issues, knowing that the firm’s digital perimeter is actively monitored and defended by a social engineering defense (SED) platform he trusts.
“Doppel achieved a level of safety and security for employees that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” they share.
When asked what advice they’d give other CISOs considering Doppel, the former cyber intelligence officer doesn’t mince words.
“Do you care about safety? Do you care about your employees? Do you care about your executives? Do you care about your board members?” they ask. “If any of those answers is yes, and you care about your brand’s image, I’d recommend Doppel in a heartbeat.”
Ready to defend your brand and your people at the speed of AI? Get a demo with Doppel today.