05 Mar AI Didn’t Invent Social Engineering, It Made It Worse
This week in cybersecurity from the editors at Cybercrime Magazine
Sausalito, Calif. – Mar. 5, 2026
In the latest episode of “CISO Confidential“, a series on the popular Cybercrime Magazine Podcast sponsored by Doppel, host Charlie Osborne asked Deneen DeFiore, VP and chief information security officer at United Airlines, how AI is changing the psychological dynamics and scam tactics compared to traditional phishing.
“AI didn’t invent social engineering, it’s just made it more scalable, precise, and believable,” said DeFiore. “It’s about simulating a trusted relationship. It’s a psychological shift when something sounds like your boss, and the references are real. Your instinct as a human is to comply, and AI is able to target that instinct pretty effectively.
Bobby Ford, Chief Strategy Officer at Doppel, and former CISO at HPE, joined Osborne and DeFiore, and emphasized how much focus the security community has placed on email and phishing, which has lowered our guard as it relates to phone calls and social media, and deepfake attacks.
In this episode, you can listen to a Fortune 500 CISO on the next generation social engineering threats faced by large enterprises, and a leading vendor who is helping to defend against digital intruders and cybercriminals.
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