impersonation
What It Means
Impersonation occurs when someone pretends to be another person to gain unauthorized access to their data or systems. The attacker tricks an organization into believing they are a legitimate person who has the right to access specific information, essentially stealing someone else's digital identity to get what they want.
Why Chief AI Officers Care
AI systems that handle personal data are prime targets for impersonation attacks, which can lead to massive data breaches, regulatory fines under GDPR and other privacy laws, and severe reputation damage. When attackers successfully impersonate legitimate users to access AI training data or model outputs, it compromises the entire system's trustworthiness and can expose sensitive customer information at scale.
Real-World Example
A fraudster calls a customer service center and uses publicly available information about a real customer (name, address, phone number) to convince the representative they are that person, then requests access to their account data or asks for their data to be sent to a different email address. The AI-powered verification system fails to detect the deception and grants access to the imposter.
Common Confusion
People often confuse impersonation with identity theft, but impersonation is specifically about temporarily pretending to be someone else to gain access, while identity theft involves actually stealing and using someone's identity long-term. Impersonation is also different from account takeover, which involves gaining control of existing accounts rather than pretending to be the account holder.
Industry-Specific Applications
See how this term applies to healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, tech, and insurance.
Healthcare: In healthcare, impersonation attacks typically involve cybercriminals posing as patients, healthcare providers, or autho...
Finance: In finance, impersonation attacks typically target high-value transactions and sensitive customer data, with attackers p...
Premium content locked
Includes:
- 6 industry-specific applications
- Relevant regulations by sector
- Real compliance scenarios
- Implementation guidance
Technical Definitions
NISTNational Institute of Standards and Technology
"A malicious individual is able to impersonate a legitimate data subject to the data controller. The adversary forges a valid access request and goes through the identity verification enforced by the data controller. The data controller sends to the adversary the data of a legitimate data subject. Defeating impersonation is the primary objective of any authentication protocol. The result of this attack is a data breach (e.g. blaggers [sic] pretend to be someone they are not in order to wheedle out the information they are seeking obtaining information illegaly which they then sell for a specified price)."Source: Security_Analysis_of_Subject_Access
Discuss This Term with Your AI Assistant
Ask how "impersonation" applies to your specific use case and regulatory context.
Start Free Trial