Proofpoint, an American enterprise cybersecurity company, is leveraging advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and agents to detect, investigate, and block threats before they reach employees.

Proofpoint Agentic Collaboration Security is an AI-powered cybersecurity system that uses a intent-base detection model and agentic capabilities to understand what an interaction is trying to accomplish, and utilizes context to distinguish malicious intent from legitimate activity in actions across emails, collaboration tools, and browser activity.

At the foundation of the system is the Proofpoint Knowledge Graph, which combines threat intelligence on active campaigns, industry attack patterns, and compromised suppliers with organization context including business relationships, communication patterns, data access, and user risk.

The other critical piece of the system is the Nexus Intent-Based Detection Model, which is designed to determine what a message is trying to accomplish and whether that objective is plausible in context. It does so by reasoning over context using multi-stage analysis that adjusts to the ambiguity of each interaction.

Together, the Knowledge Graph and Nexus model provide a shared foundation, allowing intelligence from one control point to inform detection, investigation, and user production across the system.

Proofpoint is also introducing Advanced Browser protection, providing a comprehensive security control point that extends continuous collaboration protection security beyond the gateway and inbox to the browser.

Built in partnership with Push Security, the solution unifies Proofpoint’s email threat intelligence with browser-native protection, allowing organizations to stop post-click phishing and malicious URLs in the browser, malicious browser extensions, OAuth phishing, credential theft, session hijacking, and other browser-borne attacks.

An evolving risk landscape

These solutions aim to address the growth of deceptive attacks that exploit trust and use AI to outpace traditional security tools.

AI-generated emails now appear highly authentic and can be tailored to specific employees. Attackers also compromise supplier or employee accounts, leveraging real identities and existing email conversations to trick people, making traditional red flags harder to spot. Furthermore, threats now extend beyond emails, emerging or persisting in browsers, cloud platforms, and tools such as Teams or Slack.

At the enterprise level, cyberattacks are expanding significantly. A 2026 survey of 750 enterprise chief information security officers (CISOs) in the US and the UK by Absolute Security found that 55% reported an incident in the past year, such as a cyberattack, ransomware, compromise, or data breach, that rendered mobile, remote, or hybrid endpoint devices inoperable.

In the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, cyberespionage attacks, in particular, are surging. Findings presented by Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Cyber Security Weekend META in August 2026 indicated that spyware detections rose 20%, password stealer attacks 30%, and backdoor findings 10% over the prior year. These types of malware are commonly used to infiltrate corporate environments, steal confidential information, establish persistent access, and facilitate subsequent stages of targeted attacks.

The surge in espionage is not confined to organizations, with individuals being also increasingly targeted. Over the past year, attacks involving password stealers increased by 12% across the region. This stolen information is often used to hijack accounts, conduct follow-on attacks, extort victims, or sold to third parties on underground marketplaces.

Another rapidly growing trend is mobile cyberespionage. Over the past year, the number of users targeted by mobile spyware increased by 65%, demonstrating that mobile devices are becoming one of the fastest-growing attack surfaces in the region.

AI in cybercrime

The use of AI is also expanding in cybercrime. In Africa, AI is enabling 55% of reported cybercrimes across the region making attacks faster, more scalable, and increasingly difficult for victims and platform to detect, according to INTERPOL’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026, released in August 2026.

AI-facilitated scams, credential harvesting, and automated social engineering campaigns have driven much of the region’s cybercrime-related losses since 2024. These losses have more than doubled from US$192 million in 2024 to US$484 million today.

Digital sextortion and online harassment, often facilitated by AI-generated deepfakes and synthetic media, are particularly pervasive, with some 600,000 sextortion detections recorded by TrendAI, one of several partners working with INTERPOL.

Similarly, the sophistication of business email compromise (BEC) schemes is increasing dramatically, with AI now used to generate highly convincing email correspondence.

Cyber incidents are creating significant costs for businesses. 98% of the UK and US organizations polled by Absolute Security indicated spending between US$1 and US$5 million to recover from cyber incidents, with the average cost to recover per incident now US$2.5 million. These losses, however, are likely understated, as they do not include overall losses attributed to total business downtime that attacks and incidents cause.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Middle East, based on image by Supertramp via Magnific