An employee receives an AI-generated message from what appears to be a company CEO and winds up disclosing sensitive financial information. A customer clicks an AI-enhanced ad on a social media account that looks identical to a trusted brand—and decides to buy a new pair of underpriced shoes. Neither attack began on a suspicious website—yet both will likely end on one. As CSC’s CISO Outlook 2026 reveals, attackers increasingly combine domain abuse with social media scams, executive impersonation, and AI-enabled deception as part of broader, more sophisticated campaigns that exploit multiple points of entry. Keep reading to learn how these threats intersect and why security leaders expect them to remain a significant risk in the years ahead.
Brand attacks expand beyond domains
For many years, cybersquatting ranked among the leading brand-related cyber threats facing global organizations. Cybersquatting involves the registration or use of deceptive domains that imitate a brand, product, or trusted web address.
CSC’s latest research, however, points to a more complicated threat landscape where social media deception and AI-powered impersonation complement traditional domain-based threats. With a growing number of places where attackers can imitate a trusted brand and interact directly with their intended target, organizations today contend with a broader attack surface. As those attacks become more difficult to detect and more convincing to victims, the potential for fraud, reputational damage, and legal or regulatory exposure also increases.
Brand attacks grow more interconnected
For CSC’s CISO Outlook 2026, we surveyed 300 senior executives, including chief information security officers (CISOs) and heads of cybersecurity, about the top threats facing their organizations.
Respondents ranked domain and domain name system (DNS) hijacking and subdomain takeover attacks as the most significant threat they faced in 2025. Cybersquatting ranked second, while ransomware and malware ranked third.
The CISOs’ outlook for the next three years, however, tells a different story.
Social media impersonation and defamation rose to the top of the list—with CISOs naming it the No. 1 cybersecurity threat they expect to face over the next three years. This pushed domain and DNS hijacking and cybersquatting down to the second and fourth spots, respectively. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and employee and executive impersonation, including deepfakes, rounded out the CISOs’ list of top five expected threats over the next three years.
Clearly, cybersquatting and domain abuse are not disappearing from the threat landscape. Criminals continue to use them to support cloned websites, phishing campaigns, fraud, and credential theft.
Increasingly, though, CISOs expect threat actors to combine those traditional attacks with other forms of digital deception. A fake social media profile may establish credibility and create urgency. But a lookalike domain often serves as the destination where fraud, a counterfeit sale, or identity theft ultimately occurs.
Why social media impersonation is on the rise
Organizations increasingly use social media platforms to reach, communicate with, and sell goods to customers. But as the number of customer touchpoints expands, so does the attack surface and potential for harm.
For example, social media impersonation can now involve fake or compromised profiles, pages, advertisements, or direct messages that claim to represent a legitimate organization or executive. A fraudulent customer service account might solicit personal information. A fake executive profile might lend credibility to a scam. A deceptive advertisement might direct users toward a phishing destination. Each tactic exploits trust while creating exposure for the targeted organization.
To complicate things further, people often approach social media more casually than corporate websites and may question interactions and authenticity less rigorously.
As a result, social media serves as more than just a communications and e-commerce platform. It frequently acts as an entry point into larger schemes that eventually lead to a fraudulent domain.
How AI scales brand attacks and executive impersonation
AI adds scale, speed, and sophistication to brand risks. Criminals now use AI-powered deepfake technology to impersonate executives and persuade employees to divulge financial information or transfer funds. AI helps them quickly produce believable messages and videos with synthetic images and cloned voices.
In addition, CISOs expect these kinds of attacks to increase. In our survey, 75% of respondents said they expect to see slightly more incidents, while 14% expect a significant increase. Strikingly, none of our respondents expected fewer incidents than in 2025.
Taken together, the findings suggest that AI allows attackers to scale campaigns more efficiently and convincingly across multiple channels.
How will security and brand teams respond?
The findings from The CISO Outlook 2026 point to a growing trend: Attacks to a brand can originate from almost any digital channel, and often involve multiple channels at once. Social media scams, executive impersonation, AI-enabled deception, and domain abuse increasingly work together as part of broader, more sophisticated fraud campaigns.
As a result, organizations now face a more complicated risk landscape. Understanding, monitoring, and disrupting these connected points of attack are all now important parts of modern digital brand security.
For a deeper look at the threats facing security leaders, download The CISO Outlook 2026 report.
