IT Security

Phishing Email Detection & Human Escalation

Business Challenge

Fragmented, Manual, and Unscalable Threat Response

Security teams face significant operational challenges in detecting and responding to phishing emails due to fragmented processes, manual analysis, and limited scalability. The following issues highlight the key pain points in the traditional workflow:

  • Manual Email Analysis
    When users report suspicious emails, security teams must manually analyze them for phishing indicators such as spoofed senders, suspicious links, and tone irregularities. This manual process is time-consuming and prone to delays.
  • Inconsistent Response Time
    The reliance on human analysts to perform link reputation checks, sandbox testing, and domain blocking coordination leads to inconsistent and often slow responses, allowing potential threats to linger in the environment.
  • Limited Human Capacity
    With high volumes of suspicious emails reported daily, security teams are overwhelmed. Prioritization becomes difficult, and some genuine phishing attempts may go undetected.
  • Lack of Auditability and Transparency
    Decisions to block or allow a sender or domain are not always well-documented, creating compliance risks and limiting post-incident analysis.
  • Delayed Threat Containment
    The time taken from user report to threat containment (e.g., domain block) can span several hours, increasing the risk of compromise.

IT Security / Phishing Detection / Human Escalation

Phishing Email Detection and Response with Human Escalation

Application

| Integration Service

Outlook Integration via UiPath Integration Service

Users report phishing emails using Outlook Integration service listens to mailbox. RPA bot is triggered instantly upon report.

Download & Process Emails

Downloads email body, headers, and attachments

All data sent to RPA queue. Downloads email body, headers, and attachments. All data sent to RPA queue.

Reputation & Sandbox Analysis

Sandbox and reputation checks are executed using VirusTotal and AnyRun

RPA triggers queries to VirusTotal and AnyRun. Sandbox results and link reputation reports are downloaded. Behaviors and indicators are extracted.

AI Agent

| Agentic Automation

Phishing Agent Analysis Phishing Evaluation

Agentic AI examines email content and metadata. Evaluates sandbox and VirusTotal results. Calculates phishing probability and generates summary.

Policy Enforcement

Microsoft Defender Policy Action

Based on decision, system updates block or allow lists. Domain or URL is added to Microsoft Defender policies. Immediate protection is applied.

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Phishing Detection Processing

How Agentic AI Helped

  • Autonomous Email Analysis via AI Agents
    The Agentic AI was trained to evaluate phishing indicators using a large language model (LLM). It reviews content tone, sender metadata, and link structures autonomously upon user report.
  • Automated Threat Intelligence Checks
    A robotic process automation (RPA) system runs WHOIS lookups, link reputation analysis, and executes sandbox testing for attachments or embedded URLs.
  • Human Escalation
    The findings and AI-predicted likelihood of phishing are compiled into a clear summary, which is submitted to a UiPath Action Center or web interface for security team approval.
  • Integrated Policy Enforcement
    Upon human approval, the Agentic AI automatically updates Microsoft Defender’s tenant allow/block list based on the decision (Block/Allow), ensuring fast action and consistency with policy.

Results

  • Phishing Response Time Reduced by 80%
    What previously took hours is now completed in minutes, dramatically decreasing time-to-containment for email threats.
  • Manual Effort Decreased by Over 70%
    AI and RPA handle the bulk of analysis and validation, reducing the burden on security analysts and allowing them to focus on edge cases.
  • Higher Decision Accuracy
    Combining LLM-based contextual analysis with automated link testing increases detection accuracy and consistency.
  • Full Compliance and Auditing
    Every decision and action taken is logged and traceable, aligning with internal security protocols and audit readiness.
  • Improved End-User Trust
    Faster, clearer handling of phishing reports builds confidence among employees and reduces repeated false positives or confusion.
  • Increased Analyst Bandwidth
    With Agentic AI handling standard cases, security teams can now focus on complex or multi-stage phishing threats.