7 min read
The verification playbook
One habit behind them all
AI-written phishing, deepfake video, voice cloning, synthetic identities: each is a different disguise, but they share a single weak point. Every one of them needs you to accept a claim of identity without checking it, and to act quickly before you do. Take that away and the whole category struggles.
So you do not need a separate trick for each threat. You need one habit, applied whenever a request is both sensitive and pushy. This is the verification playbook, and it has three simple parts.
The three-part playbook
1. Confirm on a separate, trusted channel
The single most useful habit in this whole course: when a request touches money, credentials, one-time codes, or sensitive data, confirm it on a separate, trusted channel before you act.
"Separate, trusted" means a route you chose and already trust, not the one the request arrived on:
- Got a suspicious email? Do not reply to it. Phone the person on a number you already have.
- Got an urgent call or voice message? Hang up and call back on a known number, or reach them another way.
- On a video call that turns to money? Confirm it through a different channel before moving anything.
The rule that makes this work: never use the contact details supplied in the suspicious message itself. A scammer will happily give you a number that reaches their accomplice. The whole point is to step outside the channel the attacker controls.
2. Agree safe words in advance
Some requests cannot wait for a callback, and some voices sound exactly right. A safe word is a shortcut you set up ahead of time: a word or phrase known only to your family, or a challenge phrase agreed within a team. If a panicked call or an urgent instruction claims to come from someone you trust, you ask for the safe word. The real person knows it. A clone or an impostor does not.
It costs nothing and it works precisely when your judgement is under the most pressure.
3. Slow down when urgency meets money
Almost every one of these scams runs on manufactured urgency: act now, keep it quiet, do not check with anyone. That pressure is not a side effect, it is the attack. Urgency exists to stop you doing exactly what this playbook asks.
So treat the combination of urgency and money as the alarm itself. Whenever you feel rushed toward a payment, a transfer, a code or a login, that feeling is your cue to slow down and verify, not your reason to hurry.
Tip
Build one reflex: urgency plus money equals verify. The moment a request pushes you to move funds or hand over a code in a hurry, pause and confirm it on a separate, trusted channel before you do anything.
A worked example
A staff member gets an email, apparently from a familiar supplier, asking to change the bank account for the next payment. This is business email compromise (BEC), the supplier-payment scam covered in Module 4; here we simply run the playbook against it. The email is fluent, the timing fits a real invoice, and it gently stresses the deadline.
The playbook makes the response obvious, no matter how polished the message is:
- Separate, trusted channel: phone the supplier on the number already on file, not one in the email.
- Slow down: a change of payment details plus time pressure is the classic pattern, so this is exactly when to pause.
- Safe word or agreed check: if the team has a rule that bank-detail changes are confirmed by phone, follow it every time, with no exceptions for "urgent" requests.
One habit, applied the same way each time, defends against all of the AI-powered scams in this module at once.
Run the playbook under pressure
Reading the three habits is not the same as using them on an afternoon when the person you need is unreachable and the deadline is real. This drill puts you in that afternoon.
Unit practice · 20 to 25 min
Run the playbook when it does not work first time
You know the three habits. This is where you run them against someone who expected you to. Your work stays in this browser: nothing is uploaded, graded or kept.
The situation
You handle payments for a small organisation in Tirana. An email arrives from your director, who is abroad this week. A supplier you pay every month has new bank details, and the invoice is due today. The email reads exactly like the director: same greeting, same habit of signing off with a first initial, and it refers to last month's invoice by its real number.
Round 1 · Your first move
What do you do first?
If you freeze, you always have one safe move
People freeze here because they think they have to decide whether the message is real. You do not, and usually you cannot.
There is one move that is always available and never wrong: do not change the payment details on the strength of the message that asked you to change them. Leaving the details exactly as they were costs nothing, breaks nothing, and can be undone tomorrow. Sending money to a new account cannot.
So the first question is never "is this real?". It is "what is the smallest thing I can do that keeps today working and leaves tomorrow open?"
If that was straightforward
What if it really was the director? Most security advice quietly assumes the suspicious message is hostile. Usually it is not, and a process that only works when you are right is not a process.
So price the false positive honestly. If you refuse and you were wrong, a real director is mildly delayed and possibly irritated, and a real supplier is paid to their old account, which still works. That is the entire cost. If you comply and you were wrong, the money is gone within the hour and it does not come back. Those two errors are not the same size, and a good rule is built around that asymmetry rather than around being perceptive.
There is a second-order cost people miss: friction lands on the most junior person in the chain, who is also the one least able to say no to a director. A rule that says "use your judgement" quietly makes that person carry the risk. A rule that says "this step happens every time, for everyone, including the director" takes it off them. That is why the rule you wrote should name a step, not an attitude.
Your turn: take a real approval that happens where you work or study. Write down what it would cost to be wrong in each direction, and say which of the two your current process is actually protecting against.
Found something unclear, outdated or improvable? Suggest an improvement
Check yourself
Educator guidance · 50 minutes, or 30 for the short form
Prepare
- • Print one facilitator pack. Print one role card set per group of four; each person must receive ONLY their own card and must not see the others
- • Groups of four work best: one finance officer, one director, one colleague, one observer. With three, drop the observer; with five, add a second observer
- • Seat the finance officer so they cannot see the director's card. The asymmetry is the whole point and it collapses if the cards are shared
- • Have the on-screen drill available afterwards, but do not open it first: running it alone before the room version removes the pressure the room supplies
Materials
- • Printed role cards, one set per group, cut and kept separate
- • Facilitator pack with the three rounds and the timings
- • Paper for each finance officer to write their rule at the end
Facilitate
- • Round 1, 10 minutes: the finance officer chooses a first move out loud. The director's card tells them to keep pressing and to be warm rather than aggressive. Do not let the room debate yet
- • Round 2, 15 minutes: announce that the director is now unreachable and the deadline is today. This is the round that does the teaching, so protect the silence while the finance officer decides
- • Round 3, 15 minutes: each finance officer writes one process rule on paper. Then swap papers between groups and have each group try to defeat the rule they received
- • Debrief, 10 minutes: only now open the on-screen drill and let them see the branch they did not take
Discussion
- • Finance officers: at what moment did you most want to just do what you were asked?
- • Directors: what did you say that worked, and did you feel you were doing anything wrong?
- • Which move settled it, and did anyone find the one that makes verifying the change unnecessary?
- • Whose job is it to carry the awkwardness of saying no, and is that the same person in your own workplace?
Suggested introduction
Do not explain the playbook first. Hand out the role cards, read the situation aloud, and give the finance officer two minutes to decide their first move while the director is already pressing them. Name nothing until after round one.
Likely misconception
Groups usually decide the task is to detect the fake. It is not: the message is designed to be undetectable and the drill says so. The task is to find a move that is safe whether or not the message is genuine, which is why paying the account already on file settles it.
Expected response
By the end each finance officer can name a move that meets the deadline without acting on the change, and can state one process rule that names a trigger and a required step rather than asking a person to be alert.
Shorten it
For 30 minutes, drop round 3's rule-swap and keep the writing. Never drop round 2: without it the drill teaches that verification always works.
Debrief
- • The message was not detectable, and that was deliberate
- • Two requests, not one: you can pay and still refuse the change
- • A rule beats vigilance, because vigilance is a person having a good day
Group adaptations
- Pairs
- Two people only: run finance officer and director, and read the colleague's line aloud yourself.
- Small groups
- Four per group is the design. Rotate roles for a second run if time allows; the director role teaches as much as the finance officer role.
- Whole class
- Run one group in the middle with everyone else observing, then have observers write the rule. Slower, but the pressure is visible to the whole room.
Setup and troubleshooting
- • A finance officer who pays immediately has not failed; ask the room what information would have helped them, and let them discover there was none
- • If a director cannot bring themselves to apply pressure, take the role yourself for one round. Some groups need to see that it is done politely
- • If a group jumps straight to the right answer, move them on to round 3 early and give them the hardest rule to defeat
Found something unclear, outdated or improvable? Suggest an improvement
Where this lesson comes from
Built from
- Workshop 5: AI Security Tools and Defending Against AI-Enabled Threats (V3.0): verification habits
- Workshop 7: Social Engineering, Phishing and Deepfakes (V3.0): defence and response
alphaPlan courses are built from taught programmes rather than invented for the web. Where a claim rests on an outside standard or a reported case, it is named above so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
shënim: ky material u krijua në kuadër të projektit 'U.S. Cybersecurity Leadership in AI for Albania', financuar nga departamenti i shtetit i shteteve të bashkuara. mendimet, gjetjet dhe përfundimet e paraqitura këtu janë të autorit(ëve) dhe nuk pasqyrojnë domosdoshmërisht ato të departamentit të shtetit të shteteve të bashkuara.
Disclaimer: This material was created on behalf of the 'U.S. Cybersecurity Leadership in AI for Albania' project, funded by the United States Department of State. The opinions, findings, and conclusions stated herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Department of State.
DisclaimerFound something unclear, outdated or improvable? Suggest an improvement