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# The fraud apocalypse, content provenance authentication and re-building trust in content
- URL: https://capitolcommunicator.com/the-fraud-apocalypse-content-provenance-authentication-and-re-building-trust-in-content/
- Published: 2025-08-21T17:03:40.000Z
- Updated: 2025-08-21T17:03:40.000Z
- Author: Guest Columnist
- Tags: PR, Media, Communications, #wp-upper-left-sponsored, #Import 2026-10-08 18:55

**By Simon Erskine Locke** 

**With the global cost of cybercrime forecast to be more than $10 trillion in 2025,** and a whopping 75% of Americans reporting they have experienced digital scams, **Sam Altman**, the founder and CEO of OpenAI, recently stated that we are facing a fraud crisis, and others are calling this an apocalypse.

Communicators may ask, *what has this got to do with me?* The answer is *everything*.

As digital fraud and misinformation rises, trust in the press releases we distribute, emails we send, phone calls we make, and content we post, is falling.

Trust is based on our ability to know that what we receive in our inboxes, chats and social media feeds is actually from the person or organization it says it is from.

Whether you’re executing a bank transaction or posting a press release, the verification of identity is the starting point for security, but when your content is shared by others, it is no longer in the protective custody of our emails or websites.

With fake and imposter content a growing threat to brands, we are at a point where audiences are increasingly skeptical about whether what they are seeing is real. This is driving the decline in trust in content.

We are in the midst of a fundamental shift from a *trust then verify world*, to *verify* then *trust*. The question for communicators is how can we help journalists, analysts and customers know that a press release, image or video is authentic? And, identify that a manipulated earnings release or deepfake video of your CEO are not to be trusted.

The world’s largest technology and media companies and an emerging ecosystem of startups including [Tauth Labs](http://www.tauth.io/?ref=capitolcommunicator.com), have been working as part of the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), and the industry standards body the Coalition for Content provenance and Authenticity, to address this challenge by building provenance information into content.

Using a three-step process 1) organization/personhood verification, 2) the integration of robust digital watermarks, and 3) the option of logging of authenticated content on blockchain, the technology provides a way for companies to build credentials into content and for audiences to verify that it is authentic and know they can trust it.

Since the digital watermark remains embedded in the content wherever it is sent or shared, journalists, analysts, or clients can confirm that a press release, report, image or video is from the organization it says it is from irrespective of how the content is shared through email, social media or distribution platforms.

The ability to integrate provenance credentials into content is not just a defensive step. In the same way the shift from *http* to *https* has bolstered trust in websites, authenticating content will make it more searchable and more valuable. It also gives communicators and audiences the ability to identify fake and manipulated content.

Declining trust in content is an existential issue for the communications industry in which content is king. With AI turbo-charging fraud, incorporating content provenance authentication into workflows adds a critical new layer of digital security to re-build, or at a minimum, maintain trust in the content communicators produce.

*Simon Erskine Locke is cofounder & CEO of Tauth.io, which provides trusted content authentication to the communications industry based on C2PA standards. He is the founder & CEO of CommunicationsMatch™, a former head of communications functions at Prudential Financial, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank, and founder of communications consultancies.*