Real-world tactics behind phishing, deepfakes, and psychological manipulation, and the practical, evidence-based countermeasures that protect your team and your family.
Digital deception has evolved far beyond the obvious scam email. Today's attacks are engineered by people, and increasingly by artificial intelligence, that understand human psychology as precisely as they understand technology. Voice cloning can now replicate a colleague's or family member's voice from seconds of audio. Deepfake video can convincingly recreate an entire executive team on a live call. Social engineers no longer need to breach systems; they simply need to breach trust.
This course, developed from a behavioral systems and intelligence analysis perspective, gives professionals a clear, evidence-based understanding of how digital deception actually works, and how to build reliable, structural defenses against it. Rather than relying on fear-based warnings or generic cybersecurity advice, this course applies a behavioral risk lens to a threat landscape that most organizations are not yet adequately prepared for.
Across six modules, learners will examine the psychological principles that make manipulation effective even against intelligent, careful professionals; the detailed mechanics of phishing, spear phishing, smishing, and vishing attacks, including business email compromise; and the technical reality of deepfake video and AI voice cloning, including documented cases of significant financial and organizational harm. The course then moves fully into application, building concrete organizational protocols, including out-of-band verification and dual authorization frameworks, and extending the same principles to household and family protection.
Designed for managers, HR professionals, senior leaders, and communication professionals, this course is structured for CPD/CE-eligible learning and is directly applicable across industries. Learners leave with a specific, implementable action plan rather than abstract awareness, including a practical family verification protocol that remains effective even against sophisticated, AI-generated impersonation.
Protection against digital deception does not require becoming a technologist. It requires a small number of well-designed habits, applied consistently. This course provides exactly that framework.
Founder at BARBURAS, where strategy meets substance
I operate at the intersection of information management, intelligence gathering, and human cyber risk; designing systems that make sense of complexity and uncover what often remains unseen. My background includes deep research in terrorism and counter-terrorism, with a focus on behavioral patterns, digital vulnerabilities, and the narratives that drive radicalization and control. Whether it's building intelligence frameworks or mitigating risk through human-centered design, I work to translate complexity into action. Alongside this, I lecture in Ethics, Communication Management and International Entrepreneurship, guiding students through the shifting terrains of strategy, storytelling, and value creation in a digital world.
Provincial regulators of CPAs in Canada do not require that independent providers of CPD be approved to offer courses. Instead, individual CPAs are responsible for assessing whether a CPD activity meets their requirements, and may take activities from any source provided those requirements are met.
Every course offered on LearnFormula is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, and advances learning objectives that are relevant to the responsibilities or professional competencies of Canadian CPAs. All activities on LearnFormula are quantifiable in terms of hours, and are also verifiable, in that users receive documented evidence of their attendance via a certificate of completion after finishing a course (and this certificate is stored by LearnFormula indefinitely). Nearly 100,000 Canadian CPAs successfully satisfy their CPD requirements via LearnFormula on an annual basis.
