A bank may have excellent cybersecurity and still see customers lose money to impersonation scams. A hotel may secure its reservation platform, yet a guest can still be fooled by a fake booking message. A company’s email may never be compromised, but a convincing message carrying its name and branding can still deceive people.

This is why I believe the customer has become one of the most important front lines in cybersecurity.

In nearly a decade of working on cyber safety across law enforcement, financial institutions, corporations, schools and communities, I have seen one pattern repeatedly. Criminals succeed because they understand how people respond to fear, authority, urgency and trust.

Digital arrest scams in India are a clear example. Criminals impersonate police officers, investigative agencies, banks and government authorities. In many cases, there is no technical breach at all. The fraud works because the victim trusts the identity being presented.

AI is making this harder. Fraudulent communication can now be polished, personalised and highly convincing. Voices can be cloned. Images and videos can be manipulated. The old advice to simply look for poor grammar or suspicious spelling is no longer enough.

Yet customer cyber safety is still often treated as an awareness activity rather than part of serious risk management.

That needs to change.

Organisations should build cyber safety into everyday customer communication, train frontline teams on current fraud methods, use social media consistently for prevention, place clear warnings at high-risk transaction points, and repeatedly tell customers what they will never be asked to do.

They should also study fraud complaints for patterns. Every complaint offers insight into how criminals are approaching customers and where communication is failing.

This is not only a banking issue. Hotels, healthcare institutions, retailers, fintech companies and government departments are all being impersonated because criminals know that trusted names make scams more believable.

The responsibility therefore cannot stop at protecting internal infrastructure. If criminals are using an organisation’s identity to deceive its customers, that organisation has a role to play in prevention.

Cybersecurity protects the organisation.

Cyber safety must increasingly protect the people who trust it.

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