IRONSCALES, email security platform trusted by 18,000+ organizations worldwide, has released third annual Cybersecurity Threat Report From Deepfakes to Double Agents The New Face of AI-Driven Cyber Risk. According to report 77% of organizations say an AI agent or tool acted on instructions or content that turned out to be malicious misleading or unauthorized in past 12 months more than half 57% report confirmed case.
While organizations made good on promises to ramp up deepfake defense growing use of AI agents is opening up modern enterprise to whole new world of risk. Report finds AI agents capable of acting on employees behalf now in use at 96% of organizations and roughly four in five give those agents access to internal systems.
"For years, the goal of a phishing email was to fool a person. Today it only has to fool the agent sitting between that person and their inbox," said Eyal Benishti, CEO of IRONSCALES. "Organizations have handed AI agents the keys to their email, files, and even payment systems, and attackers are using the oldest tricks in the book to turn those agents against them. Social engineering now has two targets to exploit, people and agents, and modern security strategies must be able to reliably protect both."
More Key Findings AI agents are now in use across modern enterprise 96% of organizations use AI agents or tools that can take actions on behalf employees 52% say use widespread only 19% limit agents to public web with no internal access most common systems agents can reach are ticketing and helpdesk tools 67% cloud storage 56% email and messaging 49% internal file repositories 49% security tools and logs 47% Security teams have little say IT primary approver at 78% security holds role at just 6% among organizations that experienced incident 39% say employee gave AI tool access that security would not have approved preparedness paradox on paper organizations look ready 93% say IR plan covers AI agents 93% training covers safe AI use 84% confident could identify incident yet 77% already had agent act on malicious content only 52% have formal policies controls IR processes.
"Last year's data showed what happens when organizations take a warning seriously: they invested, and deepfake losses became less severe," Benishti continued. "Agentic AI demands the same urgency, and it can't come at the expense of the progress already made against deepfakes. That starts with bringing security into the room when agents are approved and protecting the inbox for agents as well as humans."
About IRONSCALES
IRONSCALES is an API-based email security platform that combines Adaptive AI, agentic automation, and crowdsourced human intelligence to detect and remediate phishing, business email compromise, account takeover, deepfake, and GenAI-powered attacks. The platform deploys in minutes via native API integration for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace with no MX record changes. Beyond threat detection, IRONSCALES includes integrated phishing simulation testing, security awareness training, DMARC management, deepfake protection for Microsoft Teams, and an agentic AI virtual SOC that automates incident response. The platform is powered by a global threat intelligence network of 36,000+ security professionals across 18,000+ organizations and 3,500+ MSP partners.
