Webinar Lunch & Learn: Why Narrative Attacks Are the New Cybersecurity Crisis

Narrative attacks are intentional, coordinated efforts to manipulate public perception. Whether through inauthentic content, deepfakes, bot-driven amplification, or carefully crafted propaganda, these attacks can destabilize institutions, harm executives, and erode trust in both private and public sectors. Cybersecurity expert and author Dr. Bilyana Lilly joined Blackbird.AI CEO Wasim Khaled on a recent Lunch & Learn webinar to talk about how narrative threats are evolving, why traditional cybersecurity tools fall short, and what steps leaders should take to protect their organizations.

Narrative attacks are a shift in the threat landscape. Unlike traditional cyber threats focusing on breaching systems or stealing data, narrative attacks weaponize information to shape people’s perceptions of a company, its executives, products, or policies. Without the proper narrative intelligence tools, these threats are what Khaled calls “zero-day exploits targeting human perception” instead of code.

LEARN: What Is Narrative Intelligence?

WATCH

Policy institutions have also noted the rise of narrative attacks. For the second consecutive year, the World Economic Forum has designated disinformation as the number one global risk, while Gartner predicts that by 2028, organizations will spend more than $30 billion combating misinformation, with significant portions coming from marketing and cybersecurity budgets.

What makes these attacks particularly dangerous is their ability to blend truth with falsehood, says Dr. Bilyana Lilly, a globally recognized expert in information operations, an Associate Director at Accenture, and author of “Digital Mind Hunters” and “Russian Information Warfare.” Lilly notes that narrative attacks don’t need to be completely fabricated. “Threat actors are opportunistic,” she explains. “They’ll jump on anything from an HR policy change to a random social media comment and use everything from generative AI to deepfakes to bot networks to drive that narrative.”

The sophistication of these operations has grown rapidly, particularly among nation-states. For example, Russia’s information warfare playbook includes coordinated narrative attacks intended to erode morale among opposing populations and soldiers. According to Dr. Lilly, the Ukrainian government deals with thousands of narrative attacks monthly, ranging from false reports about President Zelensky’s health to manufactured stories about corruption among political figures.

Detecting narrative attacks requires understanding several key signals. The first is velocity, unnaturally high spread rates of messages or hashtags without a clear triggering event. The second is synchronization across multiple platforms and entities, from social media accounts to state-sponsored media. Third is the nature of the accounts amplifying the message, which often lack authentic development history, use AI-generated profile photos, or show other signs of inauthenticity.

“Most people miss these signals,” Khaled explains. “Our founding principle was creating a signal out of noise that would let you see things that could never be seen before.” This includes detecting fabricated sentiment designed to mislead decision-makers, identifying bot amplification, and recognizing coordinated actor types ranging from agenda-driven groups to state actors.

The consequences of missing these signals can be costly. A single deepfake of an explosion at the Pentagon resulted in a half-trillion-dollar stock market drop, though markets quickly recovered once the falsehood was exposed. However, recovery becomes exponentially more difficult when narrative attacks involve coordinated campaigns across multiple channels.

“Sometimes it’s very easy to identify a narrative attack’s origin, refute it, and restore the damage,” Dr. Lilly notes. “But imagine a whole set of accounts proliferating a story across different channels—social media, state-sponsored media, actual individuals. Once they get out of control and spread, those narratives are complicated to counter.”

No industry is immune to these threats. Narrative attacks have targeted banking, critical infrastructure, supply chains, labor relations, and merger and acquisition activities. Companies involved in military logistics have faced particular scrutiny from nation-states seeking to disrupt supply lines. Khaled reports seeing “companies lose not just billions, but tens of billions in market value and never get it back” following effective narrative attacks.

This evolving threat landscape explains why narrative intelligence has become a top priority for cybersecurity teams. Traditional cybersecurity tools don’t address this gap, and conventional social listening platforms can be easily gamed to show fabricated sentiment. More alarmingly, narrative attacks often serve as precursors to other cyber operations.

“In certain situations, under certain conditions, an increased volume of narrative attacks can be a good predictor for cyber operations,” Dr. Lilly explains. “Instead of looking at indicators of compromise, we can get predictive and look at warning indicators. If there’s a spike in those attacks, there are likely to be certain types of operations against certain sectors and companies about to happen.”

Organizations that are under narrative attack must act quickly. The first step is early detection and proper triage among different teams: Corporate communications might notice the spreading problem, but cybersecurity teams possess the technical expertise to investigate and provide forensics behind the operation.

“Investigate the problem as if it’s a cyber operation,” advises Dr. Lilly. “Map the tactics, techniques, and procedures. Examine it, look for attribution, look for spread, examine the damage, and contain it.”

However, preparation before an attack occurs is equally crucial. Organizations need incident response playbooks specifically designed for narrative attacks and should practice these scenarios regularly to ensure rapid response capabilities when real attacks occur.

Khaled believes narrative intelligence platforms will soon become as essential to corporate security as firewalls. “A couple of years from now, no one’s going to be out there without some sort of protection for narrative attacks,” he predicts. “There’s an AI-driven arms race occurring that everyone’s been talking about for some time, and it’s also being applied to this space.”

ON-DEMAND: From Outrage to Impact: Understanding and Mitigating Narrative Threats

THE WAY FORWARD: THREE TAKEAWAYS FOR ORGANIZATION LEADERS

• Develop incident response playbooks specifically for narrative attacks that coordinate efforts between communications, cybersecurity, and executive teams, and practice these scenarios regularly before attacks occur.
• Implement narrative intelligence platforms that can detect unusual patterns in information spread, identify inauthentic amplification, and provide early warning of potential attacks targeting your organization or industry.
• Treat narrative attacks with the same seriousness as traditional cyber threats by investigating them forensically, mapping tactics and techniques, examining attribution, and containing damage through data-driven strategic decision-making.

As Khaled puts it, corporations, boards, shareholders, and security leaders who fail to implement narrative attack defenses may eventually face questions of negligence, similar to organizations that would operate today without basic cybersecurity protections. “It’s the right time to address this threat,” he argues. “Without it, there’s a lot of uncertainty.”

• To receive a complimentary copy of The Forrester External Threat Intelligence Landscape 2025 Report, visit here.
• To learn more about how Blackbird.AI can help you in these situations, book a demo.