When AI Pretends to Be Your CEO: How Companies Stay Secure

If your business relies on video calls, messaging apps, or mobile devices, you are at risk for a new kind of attack.

In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt sits down with Christine Gadsby, Chief Security Officer at BlackBerry, to explore how AI, deepfakes, and weakened telecom infrastructure are reshaping the modern threat landscape.

Christine explains why enterprises can no longer trust what they see or hear, how metadata has become one of the most valuable intelligence sources for attackers, and why encryption alone is no longer enough to protect high-risk communications.

She also breaks down how nation-state groups like Salt Typhoon infiltrate global telco networks, exploit unpatchable 2G and 3G protocols, and use AI to refine attacks in real time.

Key Moments:

00:00 – Where Organizations Are Underestimating Communication Risk

04:05 – Can You Still Trust What You See and Hear on a Call?

08:11 – How Internal Messaging Quietly Became an Attack Surface

12:18 – Why Encryption Alone Does Not Secure Communications

16:24 – What BlackBerry Is Today and Why It Still Matters

20:31 – Why Governments and Enterprises Face a Different Threat Model

24:37 – How AI Deepfakes Changed Executive and Enterprise Risk

28:44 – Which Conversations Inside Your Company Matter Most?

32:50 – The Trust Assumptions Most Companies Don’t Realize They’re Making

36:56 – Why Attackers Wait for Moments of Urgency

41:03 – Is Cyber Extortion Sometimes a Cover for Espionage?

45:09 – Who Salt Typhoon Is and Why Telecom Networks Were Targeted

49:15 – Why Telecom Infrastructure Became an Intelligence Goldmine

53:22 – Why 2G and 3G Networks Still Put Modern Systems at Risk

57:28 – What Secure Communications Actually Require Today

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