Email continues to be the number one attack vector for enterprises, with 75% of organisations in EMEA reporting at least one successful email-based attack in the past year.
In Europe, where regulatory rigor meets operational complexity, the threats are more targeted, nuanced, and difficult to detect — and the stakes are higher. From phishing attacks to business email compromise (BEC) to supplier impersonation, the signal-to-noise ratio is only getting worse. Against this landscape, legacy email security approaches rely heavily on static rules, signatures, or sandboxing tactics simply can't keep up with today’s highly advanced polymorphic, socially engineered attacks.
Common limitations of legacy email security approaches include:
- High false positives/negatives in rule-based systems
- Lack of context about user behaviour or sender identity
- Reactive posture, often detecting threats after compromise
The result? Missed attacks, frustrated users, and exposed enterprises.
Improving detection with AI
To bolster legacy security approaches, artificial Intelligence (AI) detection has emerged as a game-changer–– with 61% of CISOs across EMEA deploying AI-powered capabilities to help to protect their organisations against human error and advanced human-centered cyber threats. However, when put up against today’s sophisticated threat landscape, it is by no means a silver bullet. For CISOs, understanding how AI is applied in email threat detection and where its limits lie is essential to building a resilient cyber defense strategy.
AI is often used interchangeably with machine learning (ML), but here’s how we break it down at Proofpoint:
- Supervised ML: Trains models on known threats vs. legitimate emails
- Unsupervised ML: Detects anomalies in behaviour without predefined labels
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): Analyses the tone, intent, and structure of messages
- Behavioural AI: Learns user and sender communication patterns to spot deviations
These technologies work together to create a multi-dimensional risk profile for every message not just based on content or attachments, but also sender history, impersonation tactics, context, and perceived sender intent.
EMEA’s complex cyber landscape
The EMEA region is home to a mix of global manufacturers, financial institutions, and high-trust services, which are all rich targets for social engineering attacks.
In addition, organisations in the region communicate across many languages - and, as our latest Human Factor 2025 report reveals, language and culture are no longer quite the deterrent they once were for cybercriminals. As generative AI tools become more accessible, cybercriminals are now able to create personalised phishing and impersonation scams in multiple languages.
Other complexities for EMEA organisations include:
- Complex regulatory environment: GDPR and information security requirements demand high accuracy and data sovereignty
- Language nuances: Non-English language complexity poses challenges for natural language processing (NLP) that generic models often miss
- Supplier network challenges: High interconnectivity throughout the region makes supply chain compromise more damaging.
AI-protection for an organisation’s people
Not all AI is created equal. Effective AI-powered threat detection in email security should offer:
- Precision and explainability: You need confidence in detections. The system must explain why a message is risky — not just that it “looks suspicious.”
- Continuous learning: With more actors turning to AI-generated attacks, defensive AI models must evolve in real-time, based on new campaigns and user feedback, without requiring constant manual tuning.
- Language and locale adaptation: AI tools should detect linguistic manipulation in German, Swiss-German, French, and even multilingual phishing attempts - an area where Proofpoint has invested heavily in region-specific NLP.
- Integration with human insight: AI augments, but does not replace, human analysis. Systems like Proofpoint TAP and Threat Response integrate SOC workflows and allow security teams to review and respond quickly.
The final piece of the puzzle is to protect the people being targeted. AI-driven detection feeds into:
- User isolation of risky messages
- Real-time warnings for potential impersonation
- Targeted security awareness training based on real threats
- Automated remediation workflows to pull back malicious emails post-delivery
When done right, AI can transform email security. In EMEA, where attackers exploit trust, language, and process, AI must be explainable, adaptive, and deeply contextual.
At Proofpoint, we don’t believe in AI for AI’s sake. We believe in protecting people. We protect people by using the most advanced, transparent, and human-centered AI in the industry.
To find out more about Proofpoint’s AI-powered human-centric security platform, please visit: https://www.proofpoint.com/uk/platform
