Few areas of cybersecurity have been reshaped by AI as fast as phishing. In just three years, generative AI has rewritten the economics of the attack, stripping out the red flags security teams have trained users to spot for decades, and pushing attackers into new channels like Microsoft Teams, voice, and video.
In this episode, Steve Malone, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at IRONSCALES, joins the podcast to unpack how the threat has evolved through what IRONSCALES calls “Phishing 3.0,” and what security leaders should actually be doing about it. Steve has spent two decades in email security, including senior product leadership roles at Mimecast and Egress, giving him a front-row seat to how attacks, and defenses, have changed.
Topics covered:
Why speed and quality, not new attack methods, are what’s really changed about phishing
What IRONSCALES’ 2025 Cost of Phishing report reveals about the gap between faster incident handling and rising overall costs
The evolution from phishing 1.0 (malicious attachments) to 2.0 (BEC and social engineering) to 3.0 (AI-generated, multi-channel attacks)
Why old advice like “spot the typo” or “call to verify” no longer holds up against deepfakes
How Ironscales’ native API integration, adaptive AI and Agentic Virtual SOC reduce the volume of incidents reaching human analysts
IRONSCALES’ red teaming agent, and how it powers hyper-personalized detection and security awareness training
Real-time deepfake detection for Microsoft Teams meetings, and the emerging threat of deepfakes in recruitment
Steve’s advice for CISOs on rethinking security metrics, hardening business processes and questioning vendors about their AI capabilities
