How Varonis Interceptor Enhances Email Security
Author: Beth Laws
Release Date: 21/07/2026
Email has always been a common route attackers take to try and gain access to a network. Cybercriminals use techniques such as spear phishing or blatant delivery of malware via email to try and compromise email accounts and sensitive data. Nowadays, with criminals integrating AI into their attacks, they are becoming even more deceptive and difficult to spot. Varonis Interceptor implements AI-powered email security to defend against these types of advanced threats.
The importance of Email Security
Often cybercriminals are able to log in to a network, and they are not necessarily ‘breaking in’ all the time. Varonis has found that the majority of attackers are gaining access by using credentials they’ve already managed to get their hands on. Very frequently, these credentials are obtained somehow via email “phishing” attacks. Email based cyberattacks have evolved into complex threats with criminals leveraging AI, helping them to improve how genuine their attempts appear. Modern attacks like this use a blend of text, imagery and behavioural manipulation to deceive users and bypass legacy tools.
Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks usually rely on impersonating the emails of executives, or trusted vendors to manipulate employees to transfer money or share confidential information. These types of emails are becoming increasingly better at mimicking legitimate communications by attempting to use a similar tone of language of the impersonated sender. Some traditional email security tools can fail to pick up on activity like this, especially when no suspicious links are included in the emails, making it difficult for out-dated email security tools to flag these.
Phishing techniques have also become increasingly more difficult to find, especially when we consider spear phishing, which is usually more targeted towards certain individuals and sometimes contains sneaky things such as QR codes embedded into attachments. Spear phishing in particular can be very difficult for an employee to notice and ultimately could lead to a data leak or a ransomware accidentally being installed.
Because of these techniques and the rapid adoption of AI, now more than ever, it’s important companies have sufficient email security tools, such as Varonis Interceptor, in place to detect and prevent email attacks.
Why is Varonis Interceptor so good!?
Interceptor combines multiple AI-powered analysis techniques to achieve higher detection rates and block messages with malicious intent before they even reach the employee's inbox. The following AI-powered techniques are used to ensure Varonis Interceptor achieves their very high accuracy rate for malicious email detections.
Natural Language Processing
Language, tone and linguistic patterns are analysed, as well as the topic and intention of the messages. Every email is scanned to look for and pull together information to gauge whether there is unusual urgency, constraints or manipulation to help determine if this is a malicious email. This can be specifically useful for BEC scenarios.
Interceptor Phishing Sandbox
Varonis Interceptor scans almost all newly registered domains and published URLs in their phishing sandbox environment. This sandbox can emulate user behaviour, allowing it to open strange URLs or QR codes in sandbox browsers to analyse sites for malicious content. This sandbox helps Varonis to collect information on a vast amount of malicious websites very quickly, aiding Interceptor to block malicious sites up to 24 hours before other market solutions.
Email Relationships
Behavioural analytics tracks communication and social patterns across emails. Relationship graphs are outlined, so any deviations away from the established baseline are understood. Conversation styles are analysed, understanding if a casual tone is normally used between two employees and organisation structure is understood, so Varonis has more context around who manages who, and who regularly emails whom.
Message Scanning
Varonis has an AI model that simulates how an employee may read a message by scanning its contents to detect easy to miss signs of malicious intent. QR codes embedded into a PDF, using an image instead of normal written email text, hidden text within emails or fraudulent logos using off-brand colours are just a few of the things which can be detected by Varonis but easily missed by the human-eye.
Conclusion
Varonis Interceptor provides advanced AI-powered email security to detect and prevent malicious software and attackers compromising networks via email. Combined with the Varonis Data Security Platform sophisticated threat detection and MDDR service, Varonis can really empower organisations to significantly improve email threat detection, investigation and ultimately prevent attacks and data breaches.