Reduction in phishing clicks
BEC incidents in 12 months
Employees trained
The challenge
Client Profile: A fast-growing e-commerce company with 450 employees, $85M annual revenue, selling consumer electronics and home goods online.
Critical Incident: The finance director fell for a sophisticated CEO impersonation email (business email compromise / BEC) and nearly wired $180K to fraudsters. The wire was stopped at the last minute by the bank's fraud team.
Pre-Existing Issues:
- •32% of employees clicked phishing simulation links (industry average: 15-20%)
- •Microsoft 365 default email security insufficient for targeted attacks
- •No ongoing security awareness training, only annual compliance videos
- •Employees didn't know how to report suspicious emails
- •IT team spent hours manually investigating reported emails
Phishing click rate reduction over time
The solution
IRONSCALES deployment (week 1-2)
AI-Powered Email Protection
- Integrated with Microsoft 365 via API (no MX record changes)
- Themis AI learns organization's email behavior patterns
- Real-time analysis of URLs, attachments, and sender authenticity
- One-click quarantine of threats across all mailboxes
User Reporting & Automation
- "Report Phishing" button added to Outlook
- Automated triage of user-reported emails
- Reduced IT team investigation time by 85%
- Instant feedback to users ("This was malicious, thank you!")
Continuous phishing simulation program
Monthly Campaigns: Realistic phishing emails sent to all employees, based on current attack trends (CEO fraud, invoice scams, password resets, package delivery, etc.)
Month 1
Baseline: 32% click rate, established learning program
Months 2-6
Progressive improvement: Click rate drops from 28% to 8%
Months 7-12
Sustained results: 4% click rate, 78% reporting rate
Micro-Learning: Users who clicked received immediate, contextual training explaining what red flags they missed. Average training completion: 3 minutes per incident.
Executive-level protection
- VIP Mailbox Monitoring: CEO, CFO, and finance team emails flagged for extra scrutiny by IRONSCALES AI
- Display Name Spoofing Detection: Blocked 23 CEO impersonation attempts over 12 months
- Wire Transfer Verification: Process added requiring phone verification for any wire transfer request via email
Measurable outcomes
87%
Reduction in phishing susceptibility (32% → 4%)
0
BEC incidents in 12 months since deployment
78%
Employee phishing reporting rate
1,247
Malicious emails blocked automatically
Business impact
Financial Loss Prevention: Zero BEC incidents in 12 months. Based on the previous near-miss ($180K), estimated loss prevention of $200K+.
IT Efficiency: Automated email threat triage reduced IT team time spent on email investigations from 15 hours/week to 2 hours/week, saving $25K annually in labor costs.
Culture Change: Employees went from viewing security as "IT's problem" to actively reporting suspicious emails. 78% now report potential threats instead of ignoring them.
Executive Confidence: C-suite and finance team can focus on business operations without constant fear of email-based fraud.
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