CyberNew CyberNew
Threat Intelligence & APT Microsoft 2 weeks ago

Improving email security outcomes with real-world Microsoft Defender insights

CN
CyberNew Threat Research Desk
• Original Reporting: Microsoft
CyberNew Threat Intel Assessment
Assessed Severity: INFORMATIONAL
Impacted Surface
Client Endpoints & Operating Systems
Intelligence Sector
Threat Intelligence & APT

Analyst Takeaway

"Every benchmark tells a story. The most valuable ones tell us where to improve next. For five consecutive quarters Microsoft has published email security benchmarking reports to provide greater transparency into real-world protection outcomes. The results have shown strong Microsoft Defender performance across pre-delivery and post-delivery scenarios, while revealing where threats and defenses..."

Recommended Defense & Mitigation

  • Threat Monitoring: Ingest published IOCs into SIEM/EDR detection rules for continuous telemetry monitoring.
  • Security Awareness: Alert staff and maintain baseline endpoint hardening across endpoints.
Curated & Verified by CyberNew Threat Intelligence Desk Standard Defense Framework (NIST / MITRE ATT&CK)

Every benchmark tells a story. The most valuable ones tell us where to improve next.

For five consecutive quarters Microsoft has published email security benchmarking reports to provide greater transparency into real-world protection outcomes. The results have shown strong Microsoft Defender performance across pre-delivery and post-delivery scenarios, while revealing where threats and defenses continue to evolve.

This quarter’s benchmark examines how continuous measurement informs protection across prevention, detection, and adaptation, and how those insights are helping improve customer outcomes.

Read the latest Microsoft benchmarking data for email security

Key takeaways

  • Defender again missed the fewest high-severity threats among the solutions evaluated, about 55% fewer than the next-closest secure email gateway (SEG) vendor.
  • Layered security adds the most value in promotional and bulk filtering and works; gains for spam and malicious email remain comparatively modest.

Benchmarking results for SEG vendors

In the latest quarterly SEG comparison from May 2026 through July 2026, Defender missed 221 high-severity threats per 1,000 protected users, 55.4% fewer than the next-closest SEG vendor. The benchmark measures missed threats instead of the total number of malicious emails that were caught and filtered, because catch totals can reflect differences in threat volume and exposure across vendor environments. By normalizing missed threats per 1,000 users we are able to provide a more consistent side-by-side comparison.

Read the latest Microsoft Defender benchmarking results

Source Verification & Original Intelligence

This threat report was reviewed by CyberNew analysts and cross-referenced with primary security disclosures from Microsoft.

Primary Advisory →