Phishing Attacks Are Getting Smarter: Is Email Security?

A few years ago, spotting a phishing email was fairly easy. Bad spelling, a strange sender address, and an oddly generic greeting. You could train staff to catch those signs and feel reasonably confident. That is no longer good enough. Attackers now use AI to write emails that match the tone, formatting, and language of a genuine colleague or supplier, and the old advice to "just look for the red flags" is not keeping pace.

This article looks at how phishing has changed, why business email compromise is such a costly risk, and what actually works to stop phishing emails from reaching your team in the first place.

How Phishing Has Changed

Phishing used to rely on volume and luck. Send enough badly written emails, and a small percentage of recipients would click. That model still exists, but it now sits alongside something far more convincing.

A few shifts worth understanding:

1. AI-generated content. Attackers use generative AI to write grammatically correct, contextually accurate emails that mimic a real colleague's tone, sometimes referencing an actual project or supplier by name.
2. Faster attack chains. What once took an attacker days to exploit after a successful click can now happen within minutes, moving from stolen credentials to account takeover almost immediately.
3. Multi-channel delivery. Phishing is no longer confined to email inboxes. Attackers increasingly use collaboration tools like Teams and Slack, QR codes, and fake verification pages to bypass traditional email filters.
4. Targeted spear phishing. Rather than mass campaigns, attackers research a specific business and craft messages referencing real names, real projects, and real vendors.

The UK government's Cyber Essentials Breaches Survey found that 85% of businesses that identified a cyber breach in the past year pointed to phishing as the method used against them. That figure has stayed stubbornly high for several years running, even as awareness has grown, which tells you something important: awareness alone is not solving the problem.

What Is Business Email Compromise?

Business email compromise, or BEC, is a specific type of phishing attack that does not rely on malware or technical exploits at all. Instead, an attacker impersonates someone trusted, often a senior executive, supplier, or finance contact, and convinces a real employee to transfer money or share sensitive information.

A typical BEC attempt might look like an urgent email from your "CEO" asking finance to approve a supplier invoice or a message pretending to be from a software provider claiming a subscription payment has failed. These emails often reference genuine details about your business, gathered from public sources like job postings or company websites, which makes them far more convincing than a generic scam.

BEC is particularly dangerous because it targets people, not systems. There is no malicious file for the antivirus to catch and no suspicious link for the filter to block. It relies entirely on trust and urgency, which is exactly why technical tools alone cannot solve it.

Why Email Filters Alone Are No Longer Enough

Many businesses still treat a spam filter as their main line of email security and assume that is sufficient. It rarely is anymore. The NCSC is direct on this point in its guidance for defending organisations against phishing: relying solely on users' ability to spot phishing emails has limited success, and organisations need to widen their defences rather than depend on a single layer.

That guidance recommends building defences across four distinct layers, and it is a useful framework for any UK business reviewing its own setup:

1. Make it difficult for attackers to reach your users. This includes technical controls like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM email authentication, which make it harder for attackers to spoof your domain or impersonate trusted senders.
2. Help users identify and report suspected phishing emails. Staff need practical training and a simple, low-friction way to flag suspicious messages, backed by a process that actually reviews what gets reported.
3. Protect your organisation from the effects of undetected phishing emails. This covers things like restricting admin account use for everyday email and browsing, so a successful click causes less damage.
4. Respond quickly to incidents. Have a clear plan for what happens when someone does click a bad link or enter credentials on a fake page, including who to notify and how to contain the damage.

How to Stop Phishing Emails Reaching Your Team

Reducing what actually lands in front of staff is the most effective place to start. Practical steps include:

1. Set up DMARC, SPF, and DKIM. These authentication standards make it much harder for attackers to send convincing emails that appear to come from your own domain, and they help block spoofed emails claiming to be from suppliers or partners too.
2. Use a modern email security filter. Look for tools that analyse behaviour and context, not just known malicious links, since AI-generated phishing often has no obvious technical red flags left to catch.
3. Restrict where links and attachments can take users. Sandboxing and link-rewriting tools can check a destination is safe at the moment someone clicks, not just when the email first arrives.
4. Enable multi-factor authentication everywhere it is available. Even if credentials are stolen, MFA adds a second barrier that stops most account takeovers cold.
5. Limit administrator account use. Staff with admin privileges should not use those accounts for everyday email and browsing, so a successful phishing click does less damage.

Training Your Team to Spot What Filters Miss

Technical controls catch a lot, but some phishing attempts will always reach an inbox. Staff awareness is still part of the picture, just not the only part. A few practical habits worth building into regular training:

1. Slow down on anything demanding urgent action, particularly payment requests or credential changes
2. Check the actual sender address, not just the display name
3. Hover over links before clicking to see where they really lead
4. Verify unusual requests from colleagues or suppliers through a separate channel, such as a phone call
5. Report suspicious emails through a simple, known process, rather than deleting and forgetting

The point is not to make every employee a security expert assistant. It is to build habits that catch the attempts your technical layers miss and to make reporting easy enough that people actually do it.

Choosing Email Security Services for Your Business

If your current setup is a basic spam filter and not much else, it is worth reviewing what a more complete email security service actually covers. When comparing providers, ask about:

1. Authentication support. Can they help you configure DMARC, SPF, and DKIM properly, not just recommend it?
2. Behavioural detection. Does their filtering look at context and behaviour, or only known bad links and attachments?
3. Reporting and response. How quickly can they act if a phishing email does get through and someone clicks?
4. Staff training. Do they offer ongoing, practical phishing awareness training, rather than a one-off session that gets forgotten within weeks?

At NetworkShield, we see a lot of businesses that assume their existing email setup covers them, right up until a convincing BEC attempt lands in someone's inbox. A proper review of your email security often reveals gaps that a basic filter was never designed to close, and closing them is usually more straightforward than businesses expect.

Final Thoughts

Phishing has not slowed down. It has become harder to spot, networks faster to exploit, and increasingly aimed at tricking people rather than breaking through technical defences. Relying on staff to catch every convincing email is no longer a realistic strategy on its own. Layering technical controls with practical staff training gives your business a far better chance of catching what modern phishing throws at it before it turns into a costly compromise.

FAQs

What is the difference between phishing and business email compromise?

Phishing is the broad category of scam emails aiming to steal information or install malware. Business email compromise is a specific type of phishing that impersonates a trusted contact to trick someone into transferring money or sharing sensitive data.

Can email filters alone stop modern phishing attacks?

No. Filters catch a significant share of attempts, but AI-generated phishing often avoids the obvious red flags filters look for. A layered approach combining authentication, filtering, training, and fast incident response works far better.

How can small businesses afford proper email security?

Many essential protections, like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM, cost little to set up and mainly require expertise rather than budget. Managed email security services also scale to smaller businesses without requiring an in-house team.

What should staff do if they click a phishing link?

Report it immediately rather than staying quiet out of embarrassment. Change any affected passwords, check recent account activity for anything unusual, and notify your IT provider so they can check for wider compromise.

Is multi-factor authentication really necessary if we have email filtering?

Yes. Filtering reduces what reaches an inbox, but it cannot stop every attempt. MFA protects your accounts even if credentials are stolen through a phishing email that gets through, making it one of the most effective single controls available.