The Urgency of High-Assurance Identity Proofing Amid Growing Identity Fraud
Remote work promised efficiency, diversity and expanded access to global talent. But it also opened a side door that cybercriminals, state-sponsored operatives and fraud rings have learned to exploit. The result is a new kind of crimewave in which attackers don’t break into networks. They walk through the front door wearing someone else’s face.
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Identity-based attacks tied to remote hiring have surged from fringe anomalies to full-blown enterprise threats.
A Fraud Economy Built on Remote Access
More than 38% of today’s global workforce consists of contractors, vendors and external workers – a shift that expands the trust perimeter that companies must secure. When combined with remote hiring and inconsistent onboarding practices, the risks multiply.
Nearly half of organizations have experienced a breach involving third‑party access, with data breach incidents costing a global average of $4.88 million in 2024.
Deepfake fraud attempts surged 3,000% in 2023, doubling every few months. Businesses lost an average of nearly $500,000 per deepfake-related incident in 2024.
Adversaries are creating identities faster than organizations can verify them.
Inside the New Face of Fraud: Real Stories, Real Damage
Emerging real-world cases are difficult to ignore.
- A fraudulent scheme assisted North Korean IT workers posing as U.S. citizens and residents infiltrate more than 300 U.S. companies using stolen identities, funneling more than $17 million overseas.
- Russian threat actors compromised U.S. defense contractors through weak identity verification processes.
- A Marks & Spencer supply chain incident underscored how vulnerabilities in external workforce access helped attackers steal login credentials to move laterally through M&S’ systems.
- In 2023, attackers impersonated MGM Resorts employees to trick the help desk into resetting credentials, enabling unauthorized access that caused widespread outages, led to major revenue losses and exposed customer data.
Hiring managers are experiencing these tactics directly. In a national study, 17% of managers encountered candidates using deepfake technology to alter their video interviews, and Gartner projects that by 2028, one in four job applicants globally will be fake.
Tactics continue to evolve:
- Proxy interviews attended by an impostor in place of the applicants;
- Off-screen coaching during assessments;
- Real-time deepfakes that mimic a synthetic persona.
This is no longer a phishing problem. It is an identity integrity problem.
Why Identity Proofing Must Evolve Fast
Passwords, static IDs and manual document checks can’t defend against adversaries who can fabricate convincing synthetic identities with consumer hardware and readily available artificial intelligence tools.
Organizations must shift from credential-based trust to identity-based trust.
High-assurance identity proofing now requires:
- Verification of a real person against a government-issued ID;
- Biometric liveness detection to identify deepfakes and impostors;
- Confirmation that the same person appears consistently across interviews and access events;
- Rapid revalidation when suspicious activity occurs.
Solutions such as IDProof+, developed by MajorKey and authID and integrated with Microsoft Entra Verified ID, are built for this threat landscape. They deliver sub-second biometric verification, deepfake resistance and global document support. These systems add certainty, not complexity.
The Hard Truth: Trust Cannot Be Assumed Anymore
Remote work is here to stay, and so are synthetic identities, nation-state infiltration attempts and organized fraud operations. As attackers industrialize their methods, organizations must match that urgency.
The core threat is no longer unauthorized access – it is authorized access granted to the wrong person.
High-assurance identity proofing is the only way to close that gap.
See the Future of Identity Security for Yourself
To understand how these attacks occur and how high-assurance identity proofing prevents them, schedule a personalized demo of IDProof+. MajorKey’s products team will walk you through real cases, emerging threat patterns, and how modern identity proofing restores trust in remote hiring and access workflows.
Your workforce deserves certainty. We can help you build it!