How AI is making cyber villains increasingly dangerous

Organisations seeing a decrease in cyberattacks cannot breathe a sigh of relief just yet because the bad actors might just be switching to a strategy of fewer but more serious attacks, including deepfake impersonations, according to Sumsub.

Andrew Sever, CEO and co-founder of Sumsub, an international identity verification and anti-fraud platform, told Business Times that cyberattacks and online criminal activities were becoming more sophisticated on the continent, incorporating impersonation and phishing attacks to target financial transactions, gamers and users of dating sites.

“I can’t say that Africa is more vulnerable than other regions in terms of fraud. It’s pretty much the same kind of patterns we see here,” Sever said. “First of all, we see very fast growth in… scam cases and deepfakes."

According to Sumsub’s research, South Africa recorded a 31% year-on-year drop in overall identity fraud, driven by stronger regulation, improved SIM–ID linkages and more advanced verification systems.

However, the report also highlights a sharp rise in AI-driven impersonation , with deepfake incidents surging 269% year-on-year. This signals a move from low-effort scams to highly targeted, high-skill attacks.

Sumsub started as a “know-your-customer” vendor serving the crypto sector and has expanded into fintech, traditional finance, i-gaming, shared mobility sites and dating platforms. Sumsub started operations in Africa in 2023 and has more than 4,000 clients globally.

Hannes Bezuidenhout, vice-president for sales in Africa at Sumsub, said that normal security systems are had not always kept up with increasingly sophisticated levels of fraud.

“If you look at the global narrative of deepfake and AI fraud, there’s a rise in that. So your low-quality, high-volume fraud has gone down, and then your synthetic and deepfake fraud — let’s say your more mature and technically advanced fraud — has picked up.”

He said new apps were proliferating in Africa, and those involving financial transactions were likely to be targeted by cybercriminals.

Your low-quality, high-volume fraud has gone down, and your more mature and technically advanced fraud has picked up — Hannes Bezuidenhout, Sumsub

Your low-quality, high-volume fraud has gone down, and your more mature and technically advanced fraud has picked up

Interpol’s “African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026″ says Africa’s digital economy is expanding at an unprecedented scale, underpinned by rapid technological adoption, mobile connectivity growth, and the digitalisation of core public and private sector services.

“In 2025, the continent recorded more than $1.1bn (R18bn) in mobile subscriptions and facilitated more than $1.1-trillion in digital transactions, reinforcing its position as a critical node in the global digital ecosystem.

“With approximately 570-million internet users, critical infrastructure sectors including financial services, health care, government administration and telecommunications have become increasingly exposed to systemic cyberthreats.”

At a regional level, the report said Southern Africa was the continent’s most digitally advanced and heavily targeted region. It accounted for 92% of all ransomware detections in Africa by TrendAI, with incidents affecting critical infrastructure such as the South African Weather Service, SAA and Namibia’s Paratus Telecom.

“The region’s ultra-high connectivity, anchored by subsea cable landings and dense data centre networks, makes it a magnet for global threat actors seeking maximum disruption.”

Ahmore Burger-Smidt, director and head of regulatory practice at Werksmans Attorneys, said non-one should wait for legislation enforcing governance before they acted, as deepfake identity fraud and synthetic identities are turning fraud prevention into an arms race.

“The compliance officer of 2030 will not be defined by what they know. They will be defined by how effectively they leverage their ecosystems,” she said.

“Risk is not a threat to be managed. It is actually a massive opportunity to seize, but you have to seize it responsibly,” she said, adding that legal and compliance professionals had a responsibility to ensure innovation served both business efficiency and the public interest.