by Marc Pavlopoulos, Founder & CEO, Syndesus

Remote hiring opened the global talent market. It also opened an entirely new area of risk.

Today, a growing number of organizations confront scenarios that would have sounded like science fiction just a few years ago:

  • A candidate applies for a remote role using an AI-enhanced resume with AI-enhanced credentials, and gets selected for an interview.
  • Candidate completes a technical assessment with assistance from AI, and aces it.
  • Candidate interviews via a video call, and with the assistance of AI, aces the interview.
  • A job offer gets extended and accepted.

Everything looks legitimate, until weeks or months later, when the company discovers the person they hired is not who they claimed to be.

In some cases, the motivation of the applicant is to get a high paying job, and even perhaps outsource it at a fraction of their pay and keep the difference. In others, the goal is far more nefarious, like gaining access to proprietary data, intellectual property, or sensitive systems.

The question companies are now beginning to ask is uncomfortable but unavoidable: If a deepfake candidate slips through the hiring process, who owns the risk? The recruiter and the talent acquisition team? Or the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)?

A New Category of Insider Threat

Traditionally, security leaders have thought about risk in two broad categories: External threats and insider threats.

External threats include attacks originating outside the company such as phishing campaigns, malware, or network intrusions. Insider threats involve people who already have legitimate access to internal systems.

Security teams invest heavily in monitoring and mitigating both. But AI-powered hiring fraud introduces a third category that sits somewhere between the two: the synthetic insider. In that role, bad actors do not hack into the organization. Instead, they apply for a job.

Using AI tools, applicants can now:

  • generate highly tailored resumes
  • fabricate detailed work histories
  • optimize credentials for applicant tracking systems
  • receive real-time assistance during interviews and tech tests

More concerning still, emerging tools allow candidates to manipulate their on-camera presence through deepfake video filters.

The result is a candidate who can appear qualified, articulate, and credible throughout the hiring process. Until, that is, they are inside the company network.

Recruiters Are Being Asked to Solve a Security Problem

Recruiters today operate under immense pressure. Hiring teams expect speed. Candidates expect responsiveness. Leadership expects results.

But detecting AI-assisted fraud was never part of the traditional recruiting toolkit.

In fact, many recruiters encountering suspicious candidates turn to LinkedIn communities for help. They share stories of interviews that felt “off.” Candidates who avoided turning on cameras. Technical responses that sounded suspiciously rehearsed or that were a few seconds delayed in being spoken.

Without clear guidance, recruiters are doing the best they can, comparing notes with peers and trying to develop instincts for spotting anomalies. But intuition is not a security strategy. And recruiters are not trained threat analysts.

A Conversation With a CISO

Recently, I had a conversation in Vancouver with a CISO responsible for security strategy at a major company. I asked a simple question: How do you evaluate threats to the organization during the interview phase?

Her answer was alarming:  We don’t.    

Her security team typically assesses both external and insider threats to the company, and has security programs designed to monitor and mitigate both. But when our conversation turned to AI-enabled hiring fraud, an interesting gap emerged.

Interview candidates are NOT employees yet. So, they are outside the purview of the CISO and their team. When they are about to become employees, then the background checks and other security focused procedures emerge. The focus on the “insider threat” kicks in. 

I heard a similar talk track at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco this year. There were multiple tracks discussing how North Koreans and other bad actors where employed by US companies in remote tech roles. The CISOs and security teams were aware of the fraud problems during the interview process.

But none of them were offering budget to the talent acquisition teams to combat the fraud. They just offered advice. The hiring process was considered a purely HR function. Not a threat vector. 

The Massive Blind Spot in the Hiring Process

That separation creates a dangerous blind spot. If security teams are focused on “employees,” and recruiting teams are focused on “candidates,” who is responsible for detecting threats during the interview process?

The scary thing is in many organizations, the answer is … recruiters and TA with no security experience.

This is not due to negligence. It is often simply a matter of organizational structure.

Two common scenarios illustrate the problem:

Smaller Companies

Organizations with fewer than 500 employees may not have a dedicated CISO or security team at all. Recruiters and hiring managers are effectively the first line of defense. But they are rarely equipped with tools or processes designed to detect sophisticated identity deception.

Larger Enterprises

Large organizations often have robust security programs. But those programs typically focus on existing employees and system access, not the interview pipeline. Unless the security team actively collaborates with HR, the hiring process can remain outside the security perimeter.

Historically, that boundary was guarded primarily through:

  • background checks
  • reference verification
  • credential validation

But in an era of remote work and AI-assisted deception, those safeguards may no longer be sufficient. And if a stolen identity is used, those typical safeguards are worthless.

Why AI Makes the Problem Worse

AI does not simply make fraud possible. It makes it scalable. A single bad actor can now generate hundreds of tailored job applications in a matter of hours. They can practice interview responses with AI coaching tools. During remote interviews, they can receive real-time assistance during technical assessments. And in extreme cases, they can manipulate video presence using deepfake technology.

This creates a troubling asymmetry. Bad actors are using sophisticated AI tools; recruiters are relying on intuition.

What is the Solution? More AI in the Hiring Process?    

AI solves many challenges in the top end of the hiring funnel. If you have thousands of candidates applying, there are dozens of software solutions that detect fraud and/or verify identity, including Socure, Tofu, Polyguard, ID.me, Veriff etc. They could remove most (but not all) of the bad actors. 

But when you’re at the final round where you are down to 2-4 candidates, there is just one approach that works 100 percent of the time for removing deep fakes and all AI-related hiring fraud: In-person interviews, either at your location or using remote interview firms.  Because it is IMPOSSIBLE to deep fake another human in person.

Relying on AI throughout the entire hiring process to solve the problem of deep fakes pits your AI against the AI of the bad actors. An endless game of whack a mole. 

In the AI era, humans still matter in the hiring process.