Fake It Till You Detect It: Live Deepfakes, Detection Gaps, and the Human Risk Management Response
Your screen is lying to you. The question is whether you know it yet.
In this session, James McQuiggan (CISSP, Founder and Advisory CISO, Apparent Security) shares the issue of the gap between creation and detection is not theoretical. It is the current attack surface being used against your users, your executives, and your hiring pipelines right now.
It's important to understand what actually closes that gap: human resistance, behavioral detection signals, and a practical human risk management framework that works when the technology and detection tools don't.
Synthetic media is not the future threat. It's important to be aware of the tools available, the countermeasure, and the layer that outlasts both.
A three-part session including a live demonstration covering the full synthetic media arc: creation, detection, and human-centric defense.
James demonstrates a custom pipeline built on ElevenLabs, Decart, and Sync.so APIs generating synthetic audio and video on stage.
The same content runs through a custom multi-detector aggregation tool, exposing in real time where detection succeeds, where it diverges, and where synthetic content evades everything.
The session closes on the layer that actually closes the gap with behavioral signals, organizational friction protocols, and a human risk management framework. All of which is grounded in current threat intelligence from the 2026 Verizon DBIR, Pindrop, and GetReal Security.
James McQuiggan brings over 25 years of experience to the cybersecurity field and is the founder and Advisory CISO of Apparent Security, a consulting practice to help organizations deal with Human Risk Management, Artificial Intelligence, and social engineering, as well as vCISO for various organizations.
His extensive background includes CISO Advisory at Knowbe4, providing thought leadership on various cybersecurity topics. McQuiggan was a senior cybersecurity roles at Siemens (Energy and Wind Divisions), where he developed expertise in industry standards, incident response, and industrial control system (ICS) security. In addition to his corporate work, James serves as part-time faculty at Full Sail University, teaching Cyber Threat Intelligence.
A dedicated community leader, he currently volunteers with ISC2 as Co-chair of the North American Region Advisory Council and Chair of the Southeast Chapter Regional Management Committee, following an eight-year tenure as President of the ISC2 Central Florida Chapter.