Beyond Awareness: How AI and Training Stop Phishing in 2025 (Part 3)

In 2025, phishing isn’t the typo-riddled scam it used to be; it’s automated, intelligent, and relentless, still the top initial-access vector. By blending AI, social engineering, and timing, these emails pass as business as usual.

How do you push back? Modernize the classic people, process, and technology triad with smarter tools, sharper humans, and tighter workflows.

Step 1: Using AI to Detect What Doesn’t Belong

Today’s technologies like Abnormal AI, don’t waste time looking for blacklisted URLs or outdated signatures. Instead, they learn your organization’s normal, who emails who, what they say, when they say it, and how often.

So when a “routine” request from your CFO comes in at 11:42 PM... asking for an urgent wire to a new vendor? it flags it, fast.

What makes today’s AI-based solutions different from the traditional ones:

• Behavioral baselines, not static rules
• Machine learning that evolves
• Real-time intent detection, not guesswork

This allows them to spot anomalies because they understand context. Not just headers.

Step 2: Train Humans with Real-World Simulation

Even with great tech, someone will click. That’s why DigitalEra’s Email Phishing Exercise turns your workforce into your second firewall.

Think drills, not quizzes. Live scenarios that mirror real adversary TTPs.

What we use:

• Templates based on actual phishing campaigns
• Constantly updated scenarios from current threat intel
• Behavior-based metrics that show who’s improving, and who’s at risk

Over time, employees stop reacting out of instinct. They spot the con. They report faster. And they learn to trust their gut when something feels off.

Why It Works: AI + Humans = Scalable Resilience

This is the layered defense modern email threats demand. Solutions like Abnormal AI protect the inbox. We train the human clicking it. Together, they adapt, evolve, and scale faster than attackers can pivot.

It’s not magic, It’s updated, disciplined strategy, instrumented and repeatable

Final Thought:

Attackers are using AI to scale deception. Your defense needs to scale resilience.

Combining behavioral defenses with adversary-realistic drills, you cut clicks and raise attacker cost.

👉 [Explore Abnormal AI]
👉 [Get started with Email Phishing Exercises]

If you missed the first two parts of this blog series:

Part 1: https://blog.digitaleragroup.com/why-phishing-still-works-in-2025-and-keeps-winning

Part 2: https://blog.digitaleragroup.com/genai-vs.-security-the-industrialization-of-phishing-attacks-part-2