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
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.