Microsoft Defender beats SEG rivals in email threat detection

Microsoft's quarterly email security benchmarking data reveals key insights about Microsoft Defender's performance compared to secure email gateways (SEG) and integrated cloud email security (ICES) vendors over one year. Key findings include:

1. **Pre-Delivery Detection**: Microsoft Defender consistently outperforms SEG vendors in identifying high-severity threats with significantly fewer misses.

2. **ICES Value**: The value of ICES is most evident in filtering promotional and bulk emails, showing a 15% uplift, whereas improvements in malicious and spam detection remained nominal.

3. **Post-Delivery Remediation**: Defender's effectiveness in catching post-delivery threats has increased, capturing 96% of malicious emails after delivery.

The benchmarking process has driven innovation, including improved promotional filtering in Outlook and AI advancements to facilitate quicker threat assessments. Microsoft remains committed to transparency in benchmarking to guide product improvements.