Disinformation Security – Protecting Your Organization from Fake News

How is your organization and its employees addressing the spread of misinformation or “fake news”? The latter of these might be “disinformation” rather than “misinformation” – it’s a distinction that’s important to know, as disinformation, more than misinformation, potentially harms your organization’s operations and outcomes.

This blog explains the discipline of “disinformation security” and the need for your organization to develop tools and strategies to detect and counter false information that help ensure the integrity of its information ecosystems and protect it from either deliberate or unintentional false information.

Disinformation vs. misinformation

Knowing the distinction between disinformation and misinformation is important. Hopefully, the following helps:

• Misinformation – the sharing of false or inaccurate information without the intent to deceive. For instance, an employee may share outdated information security tips. The employee thinks they’re being helpful and doesn’t realize the information is incorrect (and potentially harmful).
• Disinformation – the sharing of false or misleading information that’s created to deceive and potentially to cause harm. For example, when a fake and harmful press release is circulated. It was crafted to damage your organization’s reputation or to manipulate its stock price. Such disinformation can be extremely harmful to your organization if left unchecked.

Why disinformation is a growing cybersecurity concern

Both misinformation and disinformation can erode trust within your organization, confuse employees or customers, and lead to real-world consequences such as social engineering security attacks, stock volatility, or brand damage.

However, disinformation – because of its intentional and targeted nature – is a security threat that your organization must actively defend against, especially with the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI).

The use of AI and the fact that the channels for the spread of disinformation are digital likely place the need for disinformation security at your IT organization’s or security team’s door.

Disinformation attacks

According to the TechRadar website, high-quality deepfake creation has increased from circa 500,000 in 2023 to an estimated 8 million in 2025. It cites disinformation examples that include:

• Voice cloning attacks – where CEOs are impersonated to instruct the execution of actions such as making fraudulent wire transfers.
• Deepfake videos – where corporate executives make inflammatory statements that trigger share price declines and potentially internal chaos.

A high-profile example was an AI-generated fake video that claimed USAID paid Hollywood celebrities to promote the Ukrainian President. The fake clip went viral and is a good illustration of how targeted disinformation can damage reputation. While the direct target was a government agency, the tools and methods employed mirror those used in corporate deepfake attacks.

How AI drives disinformation

Not all AI-driven disinformation comes in the form of deepfake videos. AI models can generate high-quality fake news articles, cloned voices, and synthetic images. Worryingly, the perpetrator can do this in seconds with minimal AI knowledge or expertise.

AI-driven bots can spread disinformation faster than we can “humanly” detect it. For example, AI-managed social media bots can flood Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, or other social media channels with disinformation.

AI can also personalize – analyzing user behavior and preferences to tailor disinformation to maximize the psychological and emotional impact on the recipient. In a corporate context, this includes fake internal memos that are customized to look like they’re from real executives. These and voice impersonation (which can be as complicated as fake Zoom calls) leave your employees open to scams related to organizational authority.

Ultimately, AI is dramatically accelerating the spread of disinformation by making it easier, faster, cheaper, and more convincing to produce and distribute false content (and at scale).

Disinformation security

The intersection of disinformation and IT security comes in the form of the aptly titled “disinformation security.” This is a set of strategies, tools, and practices designed to protect your organization from intentionally false or misleading information that’s meant to manipulate, disrupt, or harm it.

In IT management terms, it can be considered a layer of modern cybersecurity and risk management that’s especially important given that AI can now create highly believable fake content at scale. Thankfully, while AI might be involved in the disinformation attacks, it can also be used in your corporate defense.

The key elements of disinformation security include:

• Threat intelligence and monitoring – this is the real-time monitoring of news, social media, forums, and the dark web for mentions of your brand, executives, or products. AI tools can be used to identify unnatural content behavior patterns, such as bot-like amplification.
• AI-powered content verification – this uses tools that detect AI-generated text or images, manipulated videos/audio (using forensic analysis), and cloned websites or spoofed press releases.
• Incident response for disinformation attacks – this can take the form of a disinformation playbook on how to respond when false narratives go public. The steps might include legal takedowns and public rebuttals or transparency communications, involving the coordination with PR, legal, and executive teams.
• Internal risk reduction – with employee education on how to recognize and avoid spreading false content and internal controls to prevent fake emails and insider-driven rumor propagation.

The aim is to position your organization better to prevent, identify, and make more effective responses to AI-powered fake news, leaks, or impersonations.

Disinformation creation is now easy in the age of AI

AI not only speeds up content creation, but it also lowers the barrier to entry for attackers. Because anyone can launch a sophisticated disinformation campaign.

Your corporate disinformation defenses must now:

• Assume everything can be faked
• Recognize that disinformation can come from anywhere
• Employ AI to help maintain organizational trust and resilience.

Ultimately, your organization’s IT leaders must take ownership of disinformation security.