Why AI May Soon Make the 'Email Security' Category Obsolete
As the primary (and sometimes sole) channel for corporate communications, email has been the natural area of focus for cybersecurity vendors looking to develop effective defensive solutions against outside threats. This has led to enterprise email security becoming the primary strategy for companies defending against communications-driven attacks.
However, the nature of corporate communications is changing. Today, a lot more communications are happening outside of email—moving to places like Slack, Zoom, Teams and LinkedIn.
As a result, the idea of 'enterprise email security' is no longer sufficient, as it fails to address the full scope and scale of what must be secured. This is why it's time for the security community to leave 'email security' behind and adopt a new term altogether: 'enterprise communications security.'
Modern threat actors adopt multichannel approaches.
Equipped with AI and other cutting-edge technology, threat actors are moving beyond the inbox to execute more multimodal and cross-channel attacks, where a threat originates on one platform before unfolding across others.
Imagine a threat actor initiating a spear phishing attack by sending a connection request via LinkedIn. There, they use a fake or compromised profile to build rapport with a target, cultivating trust and an air of legitimacy. From there, the communications might transition to Slack or email, with a personalized social engineering attack or malicious link.
According to recent industry research from Egress, the volume of multichannel phishing attacks is skyrocketing:
• In the first quarter of 2024, Microsoft Teams was used in 30.8% of secondary attack steps. Slack was in 19.2% of secondary attack steps, and SMS in 18.6%.
• Meanwhile, from Q4 2023 to Q1 2024, Zoom and mobile phone calls both increased as second steps in multichannel attacks by roughly a third (33.3% and 31.3%, respectively).
These trends illustrate attackers' growing interest in exploiting less secure communication channels—and, in turn, highlight the need for security teams to do more to defend them.
AI enables attacks of unprecedented speed, scale and sophistication.
Recognizing and responding to this expanding attack surface isn't enough. Modern technologies are also making it harder for organizations to keep up.
While multichannel attacks were possible in the past, modern AI makes it possible to launch them at scale. Using AI, attackers can generate highly convincing, personalized phishing messages with the click of a button.
Unlike social engineering attacks of the past, these AI-enabled attacks are polished, convincing and free of the kinds of linguistic oddities of traditional phishing messages. And yet, as impactful as generative AI has been in tipping the scales in threat actors' favor, its impact will pale in comparison to what's coming down the pike—agentic AI.
Agentic AI, deepfakes and expanding attack surfaces have introduced Phishing 3.0.
Unlike generative AI models, which rely on human prompting to generate content, analysis or other discrete outputs, AI agents are designed to perform tasks in service of a specific goal—with little to no human involvement or oversight.
Already, enterprises are using AI agents to automate a wide range of day-to-day processes. A recent study from PwC found that 79% of enterprises are already using AI agents of some sort to boost productivity.
But enterprises aren't the only ones investing in this powerful new technology. As the number, diversity and sophistication of these AI agents continue to grow, the implications for the threat landscape are staggering. If generative AI represented a step-change in the scale and speed at which threat actors can launch attacks, then AI agents are nothing short of a quantum leap.
Simultaneously, we're seeing other advanced technologies, such as deepfakes, being used to deceive and defraud victims to great effect. Look no further than the recent hack of the White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, in which hackers gained access to her cellular contact list and then communicated with lawmakers, potentially using deepfake software.
Collectively, this emerging class of threats amounts to a true paradigm shift in the phishing landscape—a change that I've taken to referring to as Phishing 3.0.
Legacy solutions are lacking in the age of Phishing 3.0.
Phishing 3.0 isn't just more complex—it's more autonomous.
Thanks to the rise of agentic AI, threat actors can now automate entire phishing workflows, from reconnaissance and message generation to platform-hopping and response manipulation. These campaigns are capable of mimicking tone, remembering context and persisting across channels in a way that traditional defenses—especially those designed for email only—are fundamentally unequipped to handle.
Most enterprises are still relying on fragmented and ineffectual security architectures. Secure email gateways (SEGs), spam filters and other legacy tools still reign supreme in most organizations, and they're growing less and less effective by the day.
Even the most advanced solutions of this type fall short by the simple fact that modern threats extend far beyond the borders of the email inbox. Text messages, direct messages on Slack, impromptu Zoom calls and connection requests via LinkedIn—all are now part of the enterprise communications ecosystem.
To make matters worse, SEGs and the like are also becoming increasingly ineffective at defending that front door. A recent research report from my company, IRONSCALES, found that traditional secure email gateways (SEGs) fail to stop an average of 67.5 phishing attacks per 100 mailboxes every month.
Orgs must adopt the tools and tactics of their adversaries.
In the face of such profound changes in the threat landscape, security teams must make profound changes of their own. Organizations must move past this outdated notion of 'email security' and instead embrace a broader, more holistic view of 'enterprise communications security.'
In addition to investing more time and energy on updated security awareness training (SAT) initiatives, this changing perspective means organizations will have to fight fire with fire by investing in intelligent and autonomous solutions of their own. When doing so, organizations should seek to unify visibility across communication platforms and automate as much of their most mission-critical defensive processes as possible.
Ultimately, the backbone of Phishing 3.0-ready security will be AI capable of understanding the context and intent behind communications, and orchestrating rapid, automated responses to suspicious activity—no matter where it occurs.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
7 hours ago
- Forbes
Culture That Carries: Leadership Lessons From India's Living Tapestry
Organizations often treat alignment like a strategy. Get people to believe in the vision. Get teams to live the values. Build a culture where purpose sits at the center and everyone moves in the same direction. But in many companies, what looks like unity is just a performance — a tightly managed choreography of sameness. When culture starts performing alignment instead of living it, most companies reach for fixes: tighter messaging, new values, more playbooks. Yet real culture isn't smooth. It isn't clean. The best ones aren't flawless — they're tapestries, woven from memory, contradiction, and the messy grace of how people actually work together. The inspiration for that might not come from another framework. Maybe it comes from something older. More lived-in. Less built, more endured. Ideas, Not Edifices While classical civilizations like Greece and Rome left behind cathedrals of stone, ancient India left behind cathedrals of thought. Her legacy isn't monuments. It's metaphors. Not walls but worldviews. Concepts like zero, karma, ahimsa, non-duality, and moksha shaped not just her identity but how the world understands selfhood, suffering, time, and truth. India didn't export uniformity. She exported inquiry. Ideas traveled along trade routes and storylines. They were debated, retold, absorbed. That influence spread far. I spent a large part of my career living in Thailand and Singapore. In Thailand, I watched a traditional puppet show based on the Ramakien — the local retelling of the Ramayana. In Yogyakarta, I stood before ninth-century temples filled with Indian deities carved into stone. Their names and faces were different. Yet their stories followed a familiar arc. Culture doesn't ask for permission. It travels when invited. And once it arrives, it adapts. It blends. It stays. That kind of transmission isn't accidental. It happens when culture leaves space for others to bring their own color. A company's purpose should work the same way. Vision statements and culture values aren't diktats. They are invitations. The more people can interpret them personally, the more powerfully they hold. The Exile's Clarity Even though I'm Indian, I've lived outside the country for more years than within. That distance hasn't dulled my connection. It has sharpened it. You begin to see with two lenses — one that remembers, one that reconsiders. This is what I've come to think of as the Exile's Clarity — the insight that comes not in immersion, but in separation. When you are both of a place and away from it, you see it more completely. You become a third-person witness to your own origin story. You notice what it permits, protects, and quietly overlooks. James Baldwin, the renowned writer and civil rights activist, captured this feeling from Paris when he wrote, 'It comes as a great shock… to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance… has not pledged allegiance to you.' From afar, contradictions become clearer. And so does love. Not blind love but one anchored in truth. So this isn't a celebration of India's perfection. Far from it. My home country is messy, contradictory, evolving. But maybe that's the point. What holds isn't a finished structure but a space that allows others to begin. That might be the truest form of inclusion — not a fixed identity but an unfinished one. As leaders, try seeing your organization from the outside in — free from the constraints and barriers you notice when looking from the inside out. View it through the eyes of your customers, your suppliers, your partners, the common man. That perspective doesn't narrow your purpose. It broadens it. A Place For Contradictions India has never been one thing. She's been shaped by migrations, conquests, philosophies, and rebellions. And yet, she held. Not by force but by absorption. As historian William Dalrymple wrote, 'India has always had a strange way with her conquerors. In defeat, she beckons them in, then slowly seduces, assimilates and transforms them.' The Mughals came as invaders and left behind poetry, cuisine, architecture. The British arrived as colonizers and left behind bureaucracy, cricket, and a parliament. Of course, they also took back her food and made it their own — national dish no less. Nothing remained untouched. But nothing stayed untouched for long. Even the sacred stories bend. The Ramayana has hundreds of versions — across states, dialects, castes. The gods change shape. The villains shift motive. But the deeper truth stays. India's cultural resilience wasn't crafted by elites alone. It was shaped in kitchens, temples, street corners, songs. By people who lived it, carried it, changed it. That's what made it hold. You might believe your organization is unified. But urging people to 'embrace your values,' while important, can't succeed until you acknowledge the contradictions that shape most organizations. There are microcultures, tribes, and groups defined (and inspired) by their own identities. Your task as a leader isn't to stamp your identity over them, but to honor and uphold these distinct values and contradictions — even as you work to unite the organization around a shared purpose and core values. Culture That Carries That idea of multiplicity isn't just old — it's alive. You see it in modern India's multilingual film culture. Blockbusters are released in five or six languages at once. Each version carries a different rhythm, accent, and sensibility but tells the same story. It's not about one dominant language. It's about honoring many voices. The same applies to organizational culture. When inclusion is real, people don't just hear the message — they hear themselves in it. Let's say a large, globally dispersed company notices a gap between its stated values and how people behave day-to-day. Instead of issuing a uniform rollout, leaders ask each region to define what those values look like in practice. In one market, 'ownership' might mean transparent escalation. In another, it might mean peer coaching. The words change. The intent deepens. What emerges isn't uniform. It's shared understanding. Performative Culture Vs. Lived Culture In India, rituals matter. But the meaning behind them matters more. Years ago, in a small town in Tamil Nadu, I stood in the middle of a festival where processions from different temples wound through the same streets. Each honored a different god. The drumming clashed, the chants overlapped, the air hung heavy with incense — and yet no one was confused. They weren't reciting the same line. They were singing the same truth. In organizations, the same principle applies. Real culture doesn't require everyone to use the same words. It asks that the meaning behind them be clear. Without that, ceremonies risk becoming empty. Now imagine a mid-sized organization in the healthcare space. Each year, it holds an 'Integrity Day.' Leaders give speeches. Employees receive awards. There's a sense of ceremony and pride. But when someone raises concerns about questionable billing practices, the issue is quietly set aside and the person is moved to another role. The celebration and the culture are two different things. Employees don't believe what's said. They believe what's backed. Clarity In Crisis Real unity doesn't come from asking everyone to play the same role. It comes from letting them define meaning for themselves. Let's say a fast-growing startup uncovers toxic behavior in one of its most critical teams. Instead of repeating slogans, the CEO pauses expansion plans and calls a company-wide session to rework the values with employee input. 'Respect' shifts from being a poster word to a set of concrete, observable actions. The culture doesn't harden. It matures. This is where Indian history offers a parallel. In times of rupture — war, reform, famine — India turned to clarity. But it never held that clarity too tightly. It set direction, then left space for people to adapt. Culture should do the same. Hold when it matters. Flex when it must. Let Go Of The Perfect India's culture — ancient, old, and new — isn't neat. It improvises. It adapts. It survives. It rarely moves in straight lines. It makes room for the pothole, the workaround, the side route. This isn't dysfunction. It's reality. What doesn't work is reimagined. What isn't available is recreated. Jugaad — improvisation or frugal innovation— has been studied in Ivy League schools and published in the Harvard Business Review. It's the same resourcefulness that powered India's Mars Orbiter Mission — a feat accomplished on a fraction of the budget of many space programs, even at a lower budget than the Hollywood movie 'Gravity'. The point isn't frugality. It's adaptability. A culture endures not by asking people to erase themselves, but by leaving room for them to expand into it. That's the shift leaders must embrace. Culture is fabric — and must be woven, rewoven, stretched. When we design for perfect culture, we flatten what makes it human. But when we invite people to make meaning inside it, culture becomes a place, not a policy. A tapestry, not a uniform. Lasting Cultures Are Carried A final thought. Nalanda — one of the world's first residential universities — drew scholars from Tibet, China, and Central Asia. They didn't come to be told what to think. They came to be invited to think with others. That's the leader's role now. Not to recite values, but to create the space where others can live them. India shows us this — contradiction doesn't dissolve identity. It deepens it. Culture that holds isn't the one most loudly declared. It's the one most quietly carried.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
As degrees get branded worthless, LinkedIn's just revealed the universities that give Gen Z the best shot at corner office jobs
As Gen Z increasingly wonders whether a diploma is worth the debt, LinkedIn says the real test of a school is its career pay-off and ROI. The platform's newest list of the top 50 colleges crowns Princeton University, Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania as the top institutions for 'long-term career success.' Smaller and lesser-known schools can also be hidden gems for young people seeking a fast track to the C-suite or building the next billion-dollar start-up. Millions of college students are headed back to school in the coming weeks, but the excitement of new classes, reconnecting with friends, and fall weather is being overshadowed by a cloud of uncertainty. With many recent graduates struggling like never before to land jobs—and some CEOs warning entry-level jobs are on the brink of extinction thanks to AI—Gen Z is left questioning whether spending four years and thousands of dollars on a degree will be well worth it. And ultimately, the answer may come down to where you obtained your degree. Graduates from Princeton University, Duke University, and the University of Pennsylvania are most likely to experience long-term career success, according to a list of the top 50 U.S. colleges released by LinkedIn this week. With indications that higher education payoff is slowly dying, it's more important now than ever to weigh up after-college career results and the likely ROI of a degree, says Andrew Seaman, senior editor-at-large for jobs and career development at LinkedIn News. 'Long-term success isn't just about landing a great first job, it's about sustained career growth and opportunity years after graduation,' Seaman tells Fortune. 'For this list, that means looking at how well a school sets alumni up for the long haul.' Whereas the median annual salary for high school graduates was $48,360 in 2024, those with a bachelor's degree typically earn just over $80,000—about a 65% increase, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cornell University, and Harvard University round out the top six best colleges, but other typically elite schools are much further down the list. Ivy League institutions Columbia University and Yale University, are No. 18 and 19, respectively. (See the full list below). Getting a degree from a popular school might not be enough LinkedIn produced its ranking using five equally weighted pillars: Job placement: Percentage of alumni from recent graduate cohorts (2019-2024) who started a full-time position or a graduate school program within the same year of graduating. Internships and recruit demand: Percentage of alumni from recent cohorts who completed an undergraduate internship; and labor market demand for recent cohorts, based on InMail outreach data. Career success: Percentage of alumni with post-graduate entrepreneurship or C-suite experience. Networth strength: How connected alumni of the same school are to each other, as well as how connected alumni from recent cohorts are to all past alumni and current students Knowledge breadth: Unique fields of study and skills gained by recent graduates. Focusing on these data points, LinkedIn produced a ranking that saw many well-known schools absent, such as Johns Hopkins University, Emory University, Georgia Tech, and the University of North Carolina. Instead, some institutions with lesser name-recognition made the top-50 cut, such as Bentley University (No. 15), Bucknell University (No. 21), and Fairfield University (No. 28). The findings overall signal that a popular or Ivy League name isn't needed to deliver exceptional career outcomes, Seaman says. 'Schools like Bentley University and Fairfield University are excelling at connecting students with high-quality internships, building strong alumni networks, and helping graduates secure jobs or graduate school placements quickly, all factors that drive long-term career success,' Seaman adds. Among Bucknell's class of 2024, 93% of students secured career opportunities within nine months of graduation, earning an average starting salary of $73,075. Smaller colleges, such as Babson College and Colgate University, were also standouts in terms of network strength and job placement. Babson in particular has the highest percentage of graduates who have become entrepreneurs and founders, according to Seaman. The growing need for AI skills As the value of college continues to be questioned, what many business leaders agree is that students need to learn AI skills above all—or they could risk becoming part of the growing number of Gen Zers who are NEET, not in employment, education, or training. Earlier this year, over 250 CEOs, including Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Airbnb's Brian Chesky, and Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi, called for an increase in computer science and AI education among all students. 'In the age of AI, we must prepare our children for the future—to be AI creators, not just consumers,' the CEOs wrote in a letter sent to lawmakers. 'A basic foundation in computer science and AI is crucial for helping every student thrive in a technology-driven world. Without it, they risk falling behind.' But that doesn't necessarily mean your college major has to be squarely AI or tech-focused. In fact, when Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was recently asked what the young version of himself would choose to focus on today, he said he'd opt for 'more of the physical sciences than the software sciences.' The top 50 schools for long-term career success According to LinkedIn Princeton University Duke University University of Pennsylvania Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Cornell University Harvard University Babson College University of Notre Dame Dartmouth College Stanford University Northwestern University University of Virginia Vanderbilt University Brown University Bentley University Tufts University Lehigh University Columbia University Yale University Carnegie Mellon University Bucknell University Boston College Villanova University University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Wake Forest University University of Chicago University of Southern California Fairfield University Washington and Lee University University of California-Berkeley Rice University Georgetown University Purdue University University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Miami University Colgate University Southern Methodist University Bryant University Worcester Polytechnic Institute The Pennsylvania State University California Institute of Technology Trinity College Boston University University of Richmond Stevens Institute of Technology The University of Texas at Austin Indiana University Bloomington Lafayette College Providence College University of Wisconsin-Madison This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
LinkedIn Expands Access to AI-Assisted Job Summaries
This story was originally published on Social Media Today. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Social Media Today newsletter. LinkedIn's expanding access to its AI-generated job summaries option for recruiters, which helps prospective employers ensure that the relevant key terms and skills are noted in your job ads, better aligning them with LinkedIn's recommendation systems. The option has been available in some regions for a while, while LinkedIn has also been developing its listings within its Recruiter platform to improve their accuracy. And now, more LinkedIn Company Page managers in more regions will be able to use its AI assistance for their job listings. As explained by LinkedIn, its AI-generated job summaries are currently available 'for a subset of LinkedIn members using LinkedIn job posts in the U.S., India, U.K., Canada, and Australia.' Originally, the option was only available in the U.S. and Canada, but now, more regions are gaining access, providing expanded AI assistance in the job listing process. And the expansion into India is significant, because India is now LinkedIn's third-biggest user market, behind the U.S. and Europe. The platform has seen rapid growth in India, and as such, it's now becoming a bigger focus for the platform, as it builds new tools and innovations. Which, for LinkedIn, at least for the moment, means more and more AI-powered options. 'AI-assisted job descriptions make it easier for hiring managers to create high-quality job descriptions quickly. Using this feature helps you spend less time creating your job description from scratch and more time on other aspects of hiring.' LinkedIn says that the process leverages data and skills insights from across the platform to draft more resonant job descriptions. 'The inputs used are job title, job location, company, workplace type, and job type that are provided to us when you start your job post.' LinkedIn says that these AI-generated summaries will help employers come up with better outlines for the position that they're hiring for, though they won't necessarily be better than human-created overviews. 'Using AI-assisted job descriptions does not mean the draft job description will be better for your role than if you write your own. We hope to help hiring managers save time writing and editing their job descriptions and use a skills-based approach to help draft a job description for you. While we try to ensure quality, mistakes can sometimes happen and job descriptions will not contain all required information. You'll still need to review the job description to make sure it is right for your role and make any edits before posting.' So it's an assistive tool, not a replacement for actual human insight and expertise. But it could be a handy way to ensure that your LinkedIn job postings align with the right elements to get your role in front of the right people in the app. And now, it's available to more users. It could be worth trying out when you go to list a new position to see how LinkedIn identifies the skills required for your workplace. Recommended Reading LinkedIn Adds Mini Sudoku, Its Sixth In-App Game Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
