Security teams are seeing a shift in phishing tactics, and it’s not just technical — it’s strategic.
Email is the most common starting point for breaches. Attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their methods for producing deceptive messages, not just links or attachments, to lure users into compromising their credentials, identities, or data. What used to be clumsy, typo-ridden messages are now hyper-personalized, AI-generated emails that bypass traditional filters and exploit human trust.
According to a new report on email security by Gartner, attackers are using large language models (LLMs) to cut attack costs by over 95%, increasing the ROI of phishing and leading to more sophisticated, varied and frequent attacks. At the same time, traditional email security tools aren’t capable of defending organizations from the rise of phishing sophistication.
To combat threats targeting inboxes, Gartner recommends adopting a multilayered email security strategy to reduce the overall attack surface. In this blog, we’ll answer questions about email security, highlight a multilayered approach, and share how Varonis Interceptor can help your organization regain trust in your inbox.
Traditional email security solutions are falling short.
Despite upgrades to email security platforms, organizations are still struggling to stop business email compromise (BEC), vendor email compromise (VEC), and account takeover (ATO). According to Gartner, Lack of protection against semantic attacks remains a critical gap in email security.
To combat BEC, VEC, ATO threats, CISOs must plan to replace or augment their email security tech stack. The modern approach includes traditional filtering from DMARC and secure email gateways (SEG) and integrates with several AI-powered phishing detection and response capabilities. The Gartner report also highlights the importance of exploring areas adjacent to email infrastructure, such as identity protection.
“Rather than concentrating all attention and resources on fine-tuning the efficacy of the ESP, organizations should explore areas adjacent to email infrastructure to enhance their defenses (see Figure 4). Syncing aspects that overlap with infrastructure and operations, security operations, security program management, and identity management functions will yield better results in stopping modern email security attacks.”
Figure 4, referenced in the Gartner quote above.
Figure 4, referenced in the Gartner quote above.
What does a multilayered approach to email security look like?
Gartner recommends security leaders adopt a multilayered approach because a singular solution can produce false negatives. Combining technologies increases the threat detection rate while decreasing the time to remove the malicious message. The longer a phishing campaign goes unnoticed, the greater havoc it can generate.
At Varonis, we take unified security seriously. Here are three critical areas of Gartner multilayered approach we think are worth emphasizing.
Identity protection and ATO
Whether through targeted spear phishing and social engineering or large-scale email blasts loaded with payloads like malicious links, the end goal is all the same for email threats — gain an identity and then exploit trust or harvest valuable data.
Once an attacker is behind the wheel of an account, they’re able to send email messages, Teams chats and more to gain privileges or launch the next stage of an attack. Many solutions struggle to detect these threats, as communication is coming from a seemingly trusted source.
By enhancing your visibility into what identities exist in your organization and changes in their behavior, you can use that information across your email platforms to shut down accounts before they can take action.
Modern email security solutions can also use AI to detect abnormal communication patterns based on enriched relationship graphs and block attacks that may have bypassed the existing gateway solutions.
Phishing detection and response
To combat the rise in phishing attempts, your organization's email security solution should have robust capabilities to catch threats before an employee even sees the message in their inbox.
Gartner recommends looking for AI-native solutions that help elevate alerting and sourcing phishing incidents, while keeping a human in the loop to ensure accuracy. Traditional SEG solutions will claim they can handle today’s threat landscape, but without little ability to remediate threats and integrate with identity protection tools, the risk of users clicking the wrong attachment or scanning a malicious QR code are still extremely high.
CISOs need to seek out solutions that offer automation to resolve phishing attacks the minute they are created, especially since the 2024 Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report found the median time for users to fall for phishing emails is less than 60 seconds.
Security awareness
Having your security team aware of how sophisticated phishing has become is step one. Step two is ensuring your entire organization understands how advanced threats are utilizing emails and other methods to gain their trust.
While typical security awareness training is a annual requirement that employees check off a list, Gartner suggests delivering awareness through teachable moments and real-time nudges when users encounter potential phishing emails as a more effective way for employees to adopt a more security-focused mindset. Ensuring employees know that security is a part of the company’s core principles is paramount.
Engage stakeholders across security and end users who rely on email for productivity
For email security to be seamless, all stakeholders should be involved in tool selection, pilot programs, and company education. Yet, Gartner reports that a lack of coordination between CISOs and teams responsible for infrastructure and operations, security program management, and security operations can lead to gaps in email security prevention, protection and response measures, resulting in blind spots.
Engaging all stakeholders early on in tool selection, pilot programs, and company education will elevate the culture of security awareness at your organization and help build a strong case for upgrading to a new solution if needed.
How Varonis Interceptor automates email security
Varonis Interceptor is an AI-native email security solution with the best detection rate on the planet, catching advanced BEC, social engineering, and phishing attacks that other products simply can’t see.
By combining signals from visual, linguistic, and behavioral analysis, Interceptor can more accurately identify and block AI-generated threats. Security teams experience fewer false negatives and positives as a result, eliminating busy work and noise.
Key features of Varonis Interceptor include:
- World–class detection accuracy and speed: A 99.9% detection rate, 2X more reliable than leading email security solutions
- Multi-modal AI: Accurately identify and block AI-generated threats, so your security teams experience fewer alerts, eliminating busy work and noise.
- Phishing Sandbox: Predictive AI analyzes and intercepts suspicious URLs and sites as soon as attackers hit publish
- Browser Security: Block live phishing sites at the source with a lightweight browser extension
Explore all that Varonis Interceptor has to offer.
Start trusting your inbox with Varonis
Gartner says it best — “the fast-changing nature of phishing tactics demands a continuous update of security measures to stay ahead of emerging threats.”
By adding Varonis to augment or replace existing solutions, you can rest easy knowing that Interceptor is combating every email-related threat and sophisticated phishing attempt from gaining access to your organization’s sensitive information. CISOs can eliminate blind spots and easily integrate security into every aspect of the inbox.
Request to see Interceptor in action today.
Read the full Gartner report, Gartner, Overcome AI-Powered Attacks by Leveling Up Your Email Security Platform, by Nikul Patel, Deepak Mishra, Max Taggett, to learn more.
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