How Microsoft’s Phishing Triage Agent Transforms SOC Efficiency
The flood of user-reported phishing emails has become a paradox for modern SOC teams. Consequently, greater awareness leads to more noise.
Microsoft’s new Phishing Triage Agent, now in public preview, offers a breakthrough solution by autonomously analyzing and classifying phishing submissions using advanced AI. For IT service providers like Refoundry, this innovation means faster response times, reduced manual workload, and a sharper focus on real threats.
The SOC Bottleneck: Phishing Reports Gone Wild
As IT professionals, we’ve long celebrated the rise in user awareness around phishing. Tools like Outlook’s “Report Phishing” button have empowered end users to flag suspicious emails, but this success has come at a cost. SOC teams are now inundated with hundreds of ambiguous or benign submissions weekly, each requiring up to 30 minutes of manual triage.
At Refoundry, where we manage security operations for clients across industries, this bottleneck has become a recurring pain point. Our analysts are spending valuable time sifting through false alarms instead of focusing on proactive threat hunting and incident response.
Enter the Phishing Triage Agent
Microsoft’s new Phishing Triage Agent, embedded directly in Microsoft Defender, is a game-changer. It uses large language model (LLM)-driven reasoning to autonomously assess the intent behind reported emails. All of this is done without relying solely on traditional indicators like malicious URLs or attachments.
This agent:
- Classifies emails as phishing, suspicious, spam, or benign.
- Provides transparent, natural language explanations for its decisions.
- Learns from analyst feedback, continuously improving its accuracy.
- Reduces manual triage workload by over 95%, allowing SOC teams to focus on high-priority threats.
Why This Matters for Our Customers
For our clients, this means:
- Faster incident response and reduced dwell time.
- Lower operational costs due to automation.
- Improved security posture through more accurate threat detection.
- Scalable defense against increasingly sophisticated phishing campaigns.
Whether you’re a financial institution facing targeted BEC attacks or a healthcare provider dealing with seasonal phishing lures, the Phishing Triage Agent adapts to your environment and threat landscape.
How Refoundry Is Leveraging This Innovation
At Refoundry, we’re integrating this agent into our managed SOC workflows for our customers leveraging Security Copilot, pairing it with Microsoft Sentinel for centralized incident tracking. The agent’s output (including detailed HTML reports and AI-driven insights) is directly embedded into incident records, streamlining analyst review and escalation.
We’re also customizing the Logic App workflows to align with client-specific policies and threat models, ensuring that the solution fits seamlessly into diverse environments.
Final Thoughts
The Phishing Triage Agent is a strategic enabler for modern cybersecurity operations. By transforming noisy inboxes into actionable intelligence, it empowers IT pros to reclaim their time and sharpen their focus on what truly matters: stopping real threats.
