Hiring in the Age of Deepfakes: How We Caught One
Samantha S. — Product, Go-to-Market & Marketing Leadership
A while ago we posted a backend engineering role on LinkedIn.
Over 100 people applied, and one candidate looked perfect. The CV matched the role, his experience made sense, and his profile looked credible. He'd even reached out directly to leadership, which, at first glance, felt proactive rather than suspicious.
On paper, this was exactly the kind of person you hope to find when you’re hiring for a complex technical role.
Except he wasn't real.
Next week, we’re launching a five-part video series about what happened, what started to feel wrong, and how the team caught it before a hiring decision became a much bigger problem.
The first episode drops on Monday, June 29, and Cyberr members get to see it first.
This is not a “deepfakes are coming” story. They’re already here, and they’re not only appearing in the places people expect. They’re turning up in hiring processes, wrapped in polished CVs, plausible profiles, AI-assisted applications, and just enough credibility to make busy teams keep moving.
That matters because hiring is full of trust decisions, especially in cybersecurity. And whilst this was a backend developer role, the risks are arguably comparable.
When you hire someone into a security role, you’re not just giving them a job title and a laptop. You may be giving them access to source code, customer environments, internal tooling, sensitive data, intellectual property, production systems, incident histories, product roadmaps, and the people who protect all of it.
That trust does not begin on day one.
It starts much earlier, with the job advert and the information you choose to share. It continues through the application, the CV, the interview process, the references, the background checks, the onboarding flow, the laptop handover, and the first access request.
This is one of the many reasons we built Cyberr the way we did. Including verification of who people are, what they’ve actually done, and whether the things they claim can be trusted.
That does not mean making hiring slower, colder, or more paranoid. It means recognising that the old signals are easier to fake than they used to be.
A polished CV is not proof. A confident interview is not proof. A credible-looking profile is not proof. And in an industry where access matters, relying on LinkedIn archaeology is starting to look a bit optimistic.
In this series, we’ll walk through the story of one candidate who looked like a great fit until the details stopped lining up. We’ll cover what happened, what raised the alarm, how the investigation unfolded, and what hiring teams can learn from it.
Episode one drops Monday.
Cyberr members get first access.
And the bragging rights of saying they were connected to Craig before he was famous... ;)
#cybersecurity #deepfakes #AI #hiringrisk
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Topics: #deepfakes, #ai, #hiringrisk, #cybersecurity