Stop advanced phishing and social engineering attacks with AI that learns your business – to stop threats across all communication channels
Stop phishing emails reaching your users
10,000
Darktrace customers
Phishing trends
Email threats are getting smarter
As well as using AI to craft more convincing phishing emails, threat actors are abusing legitimate platforms and domains to increase the likelihood of success – and other email security solutions are struggling to keep up.
Why Darktrace?
Attacker-centric security isn't the answer. Organization-specific is.
Most existing security solutions rely on historical attack data, making them blind to novel threats and multi-domain attacks. But Darktrace’s unique approach catches these threats and more.
Builds behavioral profiles for your entire organization
Darktrace’s AI learns each user’s behavior across communication channels, detecting advanced phishing without relying on payload analysis or past threat data
Blocks novel threats up to 13 days faster
Darktrace enhances your native email security by leveraging business-centric anomaly detection across inbound, outbound, and lateral messaging in email and Teams to catch threats instantly
Responds precisely, minimizing disruption
Darktrace's multi-layered understanding of communications means it neutralizes only threatening components
AI-led investigations
Free SOC analysts from manual email triage
Darktrace both educates end-users to report fewer false positives and triages the resulting user-reported mail automatically – freeing up analyst attention for genuine phishing emails.
- 60% fewer benign emails reported as a result of contextual email banners for users
- 70% improved accuracy in advanced link analysis for user-reported emails
- Darktrace automatically triages and responds to user-reported emails, reducing the average mean time to respond
Targeted response actions tailored to your business
Darktrace takes the most informed action in response to any threat, using its wider understanding of the account, network, and application environments (available through the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform).
Phishing beyond the inbox
Microsoft Teams is a growing channel for phishing and social engineering scams. Darktrace analyzes the content and context of every Teams message to understand if it poses a threat, catching both payloads and payloadless social engineering.
Stops both insider threats and external attacks
Even if a suspicious message comes from a trusted user, Darktrace analyzes it against the behavioral profile of that user, protecting organizations from internal and supply chain risk
Simplified investigations
Darktace alerts suspicious Teams messages to the SOC in a unified platform with email alerts, granting a full picture of the scope of an attack
Correlates Teams with email and accounts
Signals from Teams help augment Darktrace’s understanding of a user, improving detection across the organization
Threat story: Phishing
How we stopped an attempted Dropbox phishing attack
Darktrace detected and flagged suspicious data transfers, alerting management to a potential insider threat exfiltrating large sums of data. Its AI-driven analysis enabled rapid investigation and mitigation, protecting sensitive data from exfiltration
Threat story: Phishing
How we stopped an attempted Dropbox phishing attack
Darktrace detected and flagged suspicious data transfers, alerting management to a potential insider threat exfiltrating large sums of data. Its AI-driven analysis enabled rapid investigation and mitigation, protecting sensitive data from exfiltration
Initial infection
Threat actors used Dropbox to send phishing emails with a PDF containing a malicious link, bypassing traditional security since both the sender and hosting service were legitimate.
Darktrace identified the unusual sender behavior, held the email, and later locked the link to prevent access.
Credential harvesting
An employee bypassed security measures and accessed a fake Microsoft 365 login page designed to steal credentials, which traditional tools failed to block.
Darktrace detected the unusual domain connection and flagged the activity for investigation before further escalation.
Account takeover
Attackers used stolen credentials to log in from VPN-masked locations, bypassing MFA and evading standard security tools that trust valid tokens.
Darktrace detected anomalous logins and alerted security teams to the compromise.
Lateral movement and phishing
The compromised account created hidden inbox rules and sent phishing emails, tactics that blended into normal activity and evaded detection.
Darktrace flagged the unusual mailbox rule changes, and if Autonomous Response had been enabled, it would have disabled the account immediately.
Platform security
Protect against attacks that traverse your digital environment
A phishing message or email is often only the start of a targeted campaign to compromise a network or account. Through taking a defense-in-depth approach, Darktrace ensures that phishing can’t spread across the digital estate.
Secures communications beyond the inbox
Effortlessly scale your security to cover your email, messaging, and productivity tools (including Microsoft Teams), tracking threats across multiple areas from a single interface.
Customer story
HARMAN International uses Darktrace to stop phishing attacks
HARMAN International is an $11 billion market leader that designs and engineers connected products for automakers, consumers, and enterprises worldwide. It relies on Darktrace to stop sophisticated email attacks that evade native email defenses.
“The number of phishing emails making it to our users’ inboxes is near zero.”
—Thomas Blanchet, VP Digital Enterprise, Cloud & Cybersecurity
Over 267 reviews on Gartner Peer Insights
Recommended resources
Insights, case studies, and strategies to protect your business
White paper
The Impact of AI on Phishing
Learn how AI is lowering the barrier to entry for phishing and enabling targeted attacks at scale, and best practices for email security in 2025.
Case study
How Darktrace delivers ROI
Find out how Darktrace blocked over 85% of email threats a previous solution missed, and reduced investigation time of genuine threats by 90%.
See Darktrace in action
Protect your business from ransomware. See what Darktrace AI finds in your environment.
ActiveAI Security Platform
Cyber resilience across the entire business
Phishing
Frequently asked questions
What is a phishing attack and how does it work?
A phishing attack is a cyber threat where attackers impersonate trusted sources (like banks, brands or known entities) to trick users into revealing sensitive data. These emails often include malicious links or attachments and can lead to data breaches or financial loss. Anti-phishing services use automation and AI to stop these threats before they reach inboxes.
What are the most common types of phishing attacks?
Some common types of phishing attacks are:
• Email phishing: Generic fake emails.
• Spear phishing: Targeted messages using personal info.
• Whaling: Aimed at executives or high-value targets.
• Credential phishing: Fake login pages to steal credentials.
• Smishing/Vishing: Phishing via SMS or phone calls.
What is the impact of AI on phishing attacks?
AI can make phishing emails more convincing by mimicking human tone and style, and it lowers the barrier to entry for creating these types of campaigns. On the other hand, it also powers AI anti-phishing protection, which can analyze email behavior and intent to detect phishing emails that traditional filters miss.
How does Darktrace detect phishing emails?
Darktrace uses Self-Learning AI to understand the unique “pattern of life” for every user and device in an organization. It then detects phishing emails by identifying subtle anomalies in behavior, content and tone – even when threats originate from trusted domains or don’t contain known signatures. This allows Darktrace to catch both known and novel attacks in real time.
What actions does Darktrace take on phishing emails?
Once a phishing email is detected, Darktrace/Email can take targeted actions such as holding the email, rewriting or locking malicious links, or stripping dangerous attachments. These actions are automated and adaptive, minimizing disruption while neutralizing the threat before a user engages.
How can employees be trained to spot phishing attempts?
Darktrace enhances user awareness by inserting real-time banners that explain why an email is suspicious, helping to educate users as they interact with messages. With this context, the user can then decide whether to report the email to the security team, an approach which results in 60% fewer benign emails reported.
How does Darktrace deal with advanced phishing threats? (i.e. social engineering, QR codes, multi-stage payloads)
Darktrace is uniquely equipped to detect and stop advanced phishing tactics such as social engineering, QR code phishing (quishing), and multi-stage payloads. Its AI analyzes content, context, and communication history – not just links or attachments – to spot threats that bypass traditional filters and sandboxing tools. Its advanced link detection capabilities can also identify the malicious content behind links, even if they lead to a trusted domain.
How does Darktrace prevent credential phishing?
By recognizing unusual login patterns, redirect behaviors, or abnormal email requests, Darktrace / EMAIL detects credential phishing attempts even when links lead to seemingly legitimate sites. If credentials are stolen and a user is compromised, it can also identify the signs of an account takeover and take automatic action.
How does Darktrace ensure phishing doesn’t spread across the digital estate?
Darktrace takes an ecosystem-wide approach. If a phishing attack bypasses the inbox and spreads into a user account, Darktrace’s coverage of outbound email activity, lateral movement, login activity and SaaS accounts prevents the attack from spreading. Darktrace / EMAIL also integrates with the rest of the digital estate via the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform, which shares AI insights to improve detection for the whole enterprise.