In the relentless growth of the phishing landscape, technical advances like AI have made attack methods two-pronged. They target technical weaknesses and use identity-based attacks to bypass defenses that land directly in end user inboxes.
If you are still relying solely on a traditional secure email gateway (SEG), you are gambling with a massive vulnerability window.
The Harsh Reality of the Tech Gap
New data from PhishER Plus reveals a startling trend: over an eight-month period in 2025, 22 leading email security platforms, including SEGs, missed an average of 37% of reported emails that were actually threats found and reported by end users.
While these "leading" platforms struggle, our data shows:
- 14.1 Million Misses: PhishER Plus identified millions of phishing attempts that had already slipped past traditional SEG defenses and inferior integrated cloud email security (ICES) solutions.
- 300% Failure Increase: Traditional SEGs are missing up to 300% more phishing attacks per 10,000 emails than they were just a year ago.
- The Five-Hour Danger Zone: 31% of IT teams take more than five hours to respond to a security issue, leaving threats to sit in inboxes undetected.
Triple-Validated Intelligence is The New Gold Standard
To move beyond these limitations, organizations need triple-validated threat intelligence and an integrated defense that combines two powerful layers:
- 15 Years of Human Intelligence & 13+ Million Global Users: We fuse our proprietary AI insights, taught on 15 years of human behavior data, with the real-time reporting power of 13+ million global users to catch threats no other single organization can stop alone.
- Elite Threat Lab Vetting & Integrated Feeds: Our defensive layer is bolstered by the KnowBe4 Threat Research Lab and seamless integrations with third-party threat feeds like CrowdStrike, VirusTotal and Webroot to provide a definitive view of risk.
Staying Status Quo Is Not Going to Work in 2026
Moving on from your current email security provider isn’t just about better software; it’s about a better organizational strategy.
- See it in action: Read how Metropolis International Group left their SEG to identify more threats and reduce administrative burden all while saving on unnecessary costs.
- Master the criteria: Learn what your SecOps and IT teams should prioritize when evaluating ICES platforms in our Critical Capabilities When Evaluating Integrated Cloud Email Security and Are You Ready to Replace Your SEG? whitepapers.
Humans + AI: Better Than Your SEG
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