Abstract

In today’s digital landscape, email remains one of the most critical communication channels for businesses worldwide. However, it also presents a significant security risk, with cyber threats becoming increasingly sophisticated and pervasive. BEC and advanced phishing attacks are the most impactful threats in the email landscape and can lead to financial losses, harm to reputation, and legal ramifications for organizations. In response to these evolving threats, Varonis launched Interceptor, an AI-native email security solution using specially trained predictive AI models to see through evasive tactics.

Varonis commissioned Tolly to benchmark the accuracy of Varonis Interceptor and compare that to the leading email security vendors in the industry. Tests were conducted with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (E5), Mimecast, and Abnormal Security. The test corpus consisted of zero-hour phishing URLs submitted to the OpenPhish community site as well as malicious emails discovered from the Varonis phishing threat intelligence database.

Overall, Varonis had a detection rate of 99% which is more than 20% higher than the next best service. Note: This testing was originally conducted for SlashNext in 2024 and published as Tolly report #224112.