Email Security Needs an AI-Based Security Strategy

In today’s changing electric environment, email remains at the heart of business communication, and therefore it remains a primary target for virtual risks. According to” Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024,” threat actors send a staggering 3 billion phishing emails every day, and 96 % of phishing attacks use email as the primary vector. Over$ 55.5 billion in losses have been made in the past ten years as a result of Business Email Compromise ( BEC ).

Traditional methods of email security that rely on mechanical monitoring and responsive measures are no longer effective. A strategic and brilliant security plan, with AI at its base, is important in this new age.

The AI Arms Race: Evolving Email Threats

While AI has brought some business benefits, such as increased productivity and new creative options, it also enables adversaries to improve their phishing activities. For instance, generative AI ( GenAI ) allows attackers to create a highly personalized attack pattern that combines the scale of commodity phishing with the targeting precision of spear-phishing. Advisors even engage their target in real-world back-and-forth conversations, putting crucial assets like financial transfers and personally identifiable information ( PII ) at greater risk than ever before.

Making it more difficult for cybersecurity teams to prepare users, given the increasingly sophisticated email threats. For example, phishing attempts mimic legitimate meeting invites, and falsified, AI-generated executive messages are used to trick employees. To counter these threats, defenders must adopt comprehensive, AI-driven security strategies.

Challenges With Traditional Security Approaches

Many businesses today share a number of issues that directly affect the resilience of email security in the face of these changing threats.

  • Fragmented tool sets: Siloed security tools and point products can create a confusing web of patchwork solutions, leading to gaps in coverage and vulnerabilities.
  • Adapting to new threats: Threat actors continuously evolve their methods. Conventional, rule-based detection struggles to keep up, allowing adversaries to quickly pivot and find new gaps in defenses.

  • Manual response: Many security operations centers ( SOCs ) rely on manual processes to identify and respond to threats. Even the smallest breach can cause enormous damage before teams can intervene because of this slow response time.
  • Reactive security: Conventional approaches place a premium on detection and response after an attack has already begun. This reactive approach exposes fragile infrastructure and sensitive data to unnecessarily high risks.

To overcome these challenges, organizations must adopt an AI-first security strategy that integrates exposure management, extended detection and response (XDR), security incident and event management ( SIEM), and AI across all defense layers. Platforms can learn attacker intent from language, especially collaborative content, and coordinate response plans across enlisted IT organizations using defensive AI.

Organizations need integrated, continuous learning systems to adapt quickly and reduce the risk of missed alerts with significant consequences as threat actors use AI tactics.

Developing Your AI-Driven Security Approach

The following three important factors should be taken into account to help you develop your security plan and effectively prepare your organization for the changing email threat landscape:

1. Preventative Security

A model that prioritizes prevention must be developed instead of reactive security. It benefits from XDR-level signals, and a strong security posture is essential to safeguard against email threats. Predictive threat modeling can be applied to help you better understand how an attacker could pass through your organization based on weak configurations in this area of exposure management functionality. Knowing these insights and taking them into account will help you improve the standing of your organization regardless of how your assets change as a result of a continuous cycle in your defense.

2. A Unified Platform

It is crucial to combine information from all potential attack surfaces in order to combat the changing email threat landscape. While attacks often start with email, they typically spread laterally. To be able to holistically respond to attacks, organizations should adopt a security strategy based on a platform that integrates exposure management, XDR, and SIEM&nbsp, as the foundation for a holistic defense

3. AI at Every Layer of Your Defense

Unifying data allows for advanced AI and machine learning ( ML) models to be unlocked at every stage of an attack. It’s crucial to invest in a solution that works with large language model ( LLM)-based detections in conjunction with conventional detection methods when evaluating email security. Only LLM models can analyze the context of an email to fully understand the intent of the attacker and use this information to filter malicious emails so that they never arrive in your inbox because phishing campaigns are becoming more sophisticated. At the XDR level, AI can disrupt sophisticated BEC attacks, shortening response times and reducing analyst workload. GenAI agents will automate SOC workflows, speed up responses, and simplify investigations

Organizations will be better positioned to compete with attackers who constantly improve their methods by combining these three factors, which are also essential to email security. The unification of security solutions is essential to being able to address attacks holistically and protect your most valuable communication channels from compromise as technology advances more quickly. &nbsp,

By Ramya Chitrakar, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

About the Author

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Ramya Chitrakar, a corporate vice president at Microsoft, leads the product engineering teams responsible for developing advanced security solutions and AI-driven protection for Microsoft cloud platforms. She manages the security of hundreds of millions of users around the world with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Office 365, and Identity. Previously, she led engineering for Microsoft Intune, delivering core device management innovation to customers. Ramya holds a MS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Chicago. &nbsp,

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