Deepfakes Are Now A Renewal Risk
Adaptive Security just raised $81M Series B to stop AI-powered social engineering.
It’s a revenue signal.
Because deepfakes and impersonation are turning into account risk, not just an IT problem:
Your customer’s CFO gets a fake invoice “from your CEO”
Their admin gets a fake “urgent support call” from “your CSM”
Their security team asks: “How do we know your outreach is real?”
And then the damage spreads:
Trust erosion. Escalations. Longer security reviews. Slower expansions. Renewal fear.
If you’ve been treating trust as “the Security team’s job”, you’re about to get dragged into the mess anyway.
The CS angle most teams miss
Trust is now a product surface area.
Not in a philosophical way.
In a practical way:
Your customers judge your product by the experience around it: who contacts them, how you verify identity, how you respond to suspicious outreach, and how fast you close the loop.
Your renewal risk now includes “Are we safe working with you?” not just “Did the feature ship?”
This is the same pattern you see in regulated categories: renewal decisions are driven by risk, not demos.
If you’ve read my breakdown on how trust shows up in renewals in fintech, you’ll recognize the playbook shift in Trust isn’t a feeling, it’s a renewal input.
The uncomfortable truth
CS owns the ongoing trust motion, whether you like it or not.
Security owns controls.
Product owns the roadmap.
CS owns the relationship reality. The moments where a customer thinks: “Something feels off… are we exposed?”
If you respond like it’s “not your area”, you lose credibility fast.
If you respond like a revenue partner with a clean escalation path and a clean artifact, you gain trust when everyone else panics.
This is the same idea behind proving CS impact without perfect data: execs don’t reward activity, they reward clear ownership and decisions.
If you want the operating system for that, revisit The 15-minute CS Impact Loop.
A lightweight “Trust Touchpoint” flow for CSMs
This is the minimum viable trust motion. Simple enough to run in real accounts.
1. Set the expectation before the incident
Add a 30-second script in onboarding and QBRs:
“If anything ever feels suspicious, don’t reply. Forward it to us. We’ll verify fast.”
“We’ll never ask for passwords, MFA codes, or bank changes over email.”
“Here are our official domains and support paths.”
This aligns with the broader “risk-first” adoption posture I use in AI rollouts too: Risk-averse AI adoption is a CS system, not a policy.
2. When a customer flags suspicious outreach, say this
Use a calm, specific response:
“Good catch. Please forward the message and tell me if anyone clicked or replied.”
“We’re going to verify whether this came from our systems or an impersonation.”
“You’ll have an update from us today, even if it’s ‘still investigating’.”
Do not over-explain. Do not guess. Do not minimize.
3. What to escalate, and to whom, inside 15 minutes
Escalate if any of these are true:
Customer confirms click, reply, credential entry, or payment action
Email includes billing changes, wire details, and invoice instructions
Impersonation uses your brand, domain lookalike, or named employee
The customer security team is now involved
Internal 15-minute escalation path (minimum):
Security or IT owner (triage, indicators, containment)
Support leader (customer comms, ticket path, SLA)
Your CS leader (account risk, exec visibility)
If it’s Enterprise: Sales leader for renewal and expansion exposure
If your org doesn’t have named owners, you don’t have a trust motion.
You have luck.
4. Close the loop with an artifact, not a paragraph
After the incident, customers want something they can forward internally.
A one-page “Trust Response Summary” beats a long email thread every time.
This is where most CS stacks get exposed as “nice-to-have” because they can’t standardize the response.
Same story as tool consolidation, just in a scarier wrapper: CS stack consolidation is coming, defend your budget with ownership.
The headline your exec team will understand
Pick one:
Deepfakes are a renewal risk now. CS needs a trust motion.
Your customer won’t churn over features. They’ll churn over fear.
If leadership still thinks this is “IT’s problem”, your job is to show the commercial cost: delayed renewals, slower expansions, higher scrutiny, and higher switching appetite.
🔒 This is where most teams get stuck
They agree it matters.
They agree CS should own the motion.
Then it breaks down at execution:
Who owns what
What gets sent
What leadership sees
How it ties to renewal
That’s what the paid section solves.
🔒 Paid: The Trust Incident Kit (plug-and-play)
I built everything below to be usable this week.
Built for CS leaders who need a trust playbook before the next renewal call.
Upgrade to get the scripts, checklist, and the one-page artifact customers can forward internally.
Trust Touchpoint Playbook (CSM-ready): when to run it, the exact language to use, and how to position it without creating fear
15-Minute Escalation Checklist: what to collect, who to ping (in order), and what CS should never promise in the first response
Customer Follow-Up Email Templates: one for “no impact confirmed” and one for “potential exposure”, written to be calm and forwardable to Security and Finance
One-Page Trust Response Summary: a customer-forwardable artifact with controls, status, customer actions, and update cadence
This pairs with Customer Success metrics executives actually care about and the Weekly CS exec update template, so you can report trust risk like a leader, not like a messenger.