Silent Targets: How Cybercriminals Systematically Exploit the Elderly And What Security Teams Can...

Silent Targets: How Cybercriminals Systematically Exploit the Elderly And What Security Teams Can Do by Kassandra Pierre Bedell Older adults are losing more money to cyber-enabled fraud than any other demographic yet most security systems are not designed to protect them. From romance scams and “grandchild in jail” schemes to tech support fraud and deepfake voice impersonation, attackers are running sophisticated, multi-stage social engineering campaigns that rival the operational maturity of many APT groups. This talk reframes elder fraud not as a “user awareness problem,” but as a failure of modern security threat modeling. We will break down how these scams actually work using a human-centered attack kill chain, show why traditional security controls (MFA, warnings, call blocking, bank flags) routinely fail under emotional manipulation, and walk through real-world case studies where victims lost life-changing sums despite “secure” systems. Attendees will leave with practical, implementable strategies for defending high-risk populations, including behavioral fraud signals, transaction safety patterns, human-centered security design, and ecosystem-level interventions involving banks, healthcare, and caregivers. If your systems are technically secure but your users are still being drained, your systems are not actually secure.