The Email Threat Has Changed. Has Your Defence? AI-Powered Phishing and Defender for Office 365

Email remains one of the most important attack surfaces for organisations, but the way attackers operate is changing. AI is making phishing, impersonation, Business Email Compromise and social engineering attacks more convincing, more personalised and harder to identify. Is your organisation protected against the way attacks happen today, or the way they used to happen?

About this session

This is Part 2 of The New Microsoft Security Challenge, a two-part webinar series from AvantIT and FRCI. It was delivered by FRCI on 1 October 2026 as an online session on Microsoft Teams.

FRCI explored the evolving email threat landscape and how Microsoft Defender for Office 365 can help organisations respond with intelligent, multi-layered protection. The session moved the discussion from the changing threat landscape to the technologies and capabilities organisations can use to defend themselves.

What the session covered

• The current email-based threat landscape
• How AI is making common email attacks more convincing
• Phishing, impersonation and Business Email Compromise
• Microsoft Defender for Office 365
• Personalised protection and threat intelligence
• Safe Links and Safe Attachments
• Multi-layered protection across Microsoft 365
• Microsoft 365 licensing and security capabilities
• A practical live demonstration

Why the threat has changed

The classic warning signs, such as poor spelling, generic greetings and clumsy formatting, are disappearing. AI lets an attacker write fluent, personalised messages at scale, imitate a colleague’s tone and tailor a request to a role. Impersonation and Business Email Compromise attacks, which depend on looking credible, benefit most.

That is why defence has to be layered. No single filter or awareness session is enough on its own. Protection needs to combine threat intelligence, checks on links and attachments at the moment of click, and controls across the whole Microsoft 365 environment, backed by users who know what to question.

Part 1: what your own people are building

The other half of the challenge sits inside your organisation. In Part 1, AvantIT looked at how citizen developers, Power Platform and AI agents are creating a new attack surface. Read the write-up and watch the video: The New Microsoft Security Challenge, Part 1.

Together, the series is about three things: build faster, govern better, defend smarter.

Not sure what your Microsoft 365 licences already cover?

Many organisations already own more security capability than they use. Talk to our team and we will help you work out what is switched on, what is missing and where to start.