AI-enabled attacks rose 89%, raising fleet data exposure

By Marcus Bennett

Attacks by AI-enabled adversaries increased 89%, according to CrowdStrike’s 2026 Global Threat Report, a rise Jane Clark links to a basic trucking vulnerability: employees can be manipulated into revealing data. Clark, senior vice president of operations at NationaLease, says AI now makes deception easier even for dedicated staff and executives. Her warning is blunt: “There is no software update, firewall, or AI tool that can completely replace good judgment.” Her account gives no comparison period or trucking-specific incident count, so the figure signals a wider cybersecurity trend, not a freight-specific rate.

How do attackers turn public details into a breach?

Attackers do not need advanced technical skills to assemble a convincing impersonation. They can find company details, offices, employee names and titles in multiple online locations, then track people on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. That research supports requests that impersonate colleagues, bosses, suppliers or other entities seeking gated or secure data.

Clark’s taxonomy identifies six social-engineering routes. Their labels vary, but the common commercial test is simple: does the message create urgency, request information or introduce an unexpected attachment?

• Phishing: Fraudulent emails appear to come from trusted sources and trick recipients into clicking malicious links or sharing login credentials.
• Vishing: Attackers call or leave voicemails while posing as banks, suppliers, tech support staff, colleagues or employers. AI voice cloning has made the cloned voice nearly impossible to distinguish from the real person, Clark says.
• Smishing: CrowdStrike defines this as “Fraudulent text messages claiming an urgent issue, such as an undelivered package or a bank alert, containing a malicious link.”
• Quishing: Malicious QR codes on physical flyers or digital ads direct users to fake websites that steal data or prompt harmful downloads.
• Spear phishing: Attackers target a specific employee with customized, researched information, narrowing the deception to one person.
• Whaling: Cisco Systems defines this as phishing aimed at high-profile individuals, including C-level executives, board members and top organizational leaders, to steal money or sensitive data.

Clark does not rank these methods by frequency or cite a trucking breach in which one succeeded. Her point is that attackers keep changing tactics after defenders address each one.

What should a carrier verify before fleet data moves?

Clark does not claim that any checklist prevents every attack; her steps aim to reduce the number of incidents, with fleet data among the assets at risk. For carriers, shippers and forwarders, verification adds steps before fleet or other sensitive data moves. Skipping those steps leaves the impersonation route open; making them can delay legitimate requests. The article assigns no time or dollar cost to that trade-off.

• Verify independently. Treat calls, texts or emails that sound urgent, request personal data or carry unexpected attachments as suspicious. Contact the real sender at a known phone number or email address in real time, not the contact details in the suspicious message. This adds friction, and the article does not claim it eliminates fraud.
• Require multifactor authentication. MFA adds an extra security layer, ensuring that passwords alone do not grant access to private data. That control reduces one route to account compromise, but it cannot confirm the identity behind a fraudulent request.
• Update software. Regularly update operating systems, browsers and security tools to patch vulnerabilities. These updates address software weaknesses; they do not solve the impersonation problem in Clark’s account.
• Train continuously. Every employee needs ongoing cybersecurity training because attackers develop a new approach after each tactic is addressed. The source gives no course schedule or completion target, and Clark concedes that anyone can be fooled.
• Test and reinforce. IT departments should send test phishing emails to employees, provide a way to report suspicious messages and give extra training to anyone who clicks a link or attachment. The article gives no testing frequency or pass rate, so the exercise identifies weaknesses rather than guaranteeing compliance.

Those controls matter because criminals often need to trick only one person to gain network access. Every worker, from the front desk to the corner office, becomes a target, while technology retains a critical but incomplete role. For shippers and forwarders, the same rule applies to requests for gated or secure data: verify the sender through an established contact channel before acting.

The article gives no example of a compromised carrier, no estimate of disrupted freight and no measure of training savings. It presents a prevention framework, not evidence that a named trucking company has reduced incident rates by applying it.

Clark’s perspective comes from her senior operations role at NationaLease. Before joining NationaLease, she served as area vice president for Randstad, one of the nation’s largest recruitment agencies, and held management posts with QPS Companies, Pro Staff and Manpower.

Her closing prescription is organizational rather than technical: build awareness, skepticism and verification across the workforce. The article offers no freight-rate, capacity or policy forecast to extrapolate. Its forward-looking test is operational: whether trucking operators keep verifying requests and training employees as attackers develop the next “-shing” method.