Email Security Evolution: What the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Tells Us About Tomorrow's Threats

After a decade, Gartner® has reintroduced the Magic Quadrant™ for Email Security Platforms—marking a significant shift from its previous designation as the Magic Quadrant™ for Secure Email Gateways. This change reflects a broader evolution in email security, acknowledging that modern threats require more than traditional gateway-based defenses.

The 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ report highlights how advances in AI, the adoption of cloud-native architectures, and new approaches like social graph analysis have redefined what organizations need from email security platforms. These shifts come at a critical time as cybercriminals leverage emerging technologies, such as large language models (LLMs), to craft more convincing and difficult-to-detect phishing campaigns.

Gartner’s decision to revisit this critical space signals how email has become a key vulnerability for organizations worldwide—and how innovative platforms like Abnormal Security are stepping up to meet these challenges.

Here, we’ll explore some of the key trends from the latest Magic Quadrant™ report and provide insights into how they’re reshaping the email security market.

Cybercriminals today are leveraging artificial intelligence to create attacks that are more targeted, adaptive, and convincing than ever before. AI-generated phishing emails, for example, mimic human behavior with alarming accuracy, bypassing traditional security filters and deceiving even the most cautious employees. As Gartner notes, “Humans are increasingly incapable of identifying social engineering attacks as LLMs are refined for purpose by attackers.”

To combat these advanced threats, organizations must adopt advanced AI-driven defenses. Only strong, adaptive AI models can analyze vast datasets in real time to detect anomalies, identify patterns, and block threats before they reach inboxes. In today’s environment, AI isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a necessity.

Attackers are no longer relying on outdated, scattershot techniques. Instead, they are exploiting social relationships and impersonating trusted identities to infiltrate organizations. According to Gartner, this makes social graph analysis and identity context “essential components for the future of email security.” By mapping relationships and analyzing communication patterns, advanced solutions can quickly identify anomalies that indicate potential attacks, such as business email compromise (BEC) or account takeover attempts.

These capabilities provide deeper insights into who is communicating, how, and why—empowering organizations to detect and prevent attacks before they cause harm.

Legacy secure email gateways (SEGs) have long been a staple of email security. However, their rigid architectures often struggle to keep pace with today’s advanced threats. The emergence of integrated cloud email security, or ICES solutions, which utilize API connections to monitor inboxes and remediate threats in real time, marks a significant shift in email security. According to Gartner, these solutions “drastically reduce implementation complexity, timelines, and by extension, the ability to competitively compare the effectiveness of various email security platforms.”

Unlike the SEG, which requires the change of mailflow and MX records, the use of APIs enables seamless integration with modern cloud email platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. This approach also provides real-time visibility and control, without the complexity and latency of traditional gateways. By reducing administrative burdens and improving security efficacy, ICES solutions have become the preferred choice for organizations seeking scalable and effective defenses against evolving threats.

Additionally, Gartner emphasized the transformative impact of emerging technologies, noting that “advances in natural language processing (NLP) and the advent of large language models (LLMs) have changed both how organizations are attacked and how ESPs defend against social engineering attacks.”

Attackers now harness LLMs to generate highly convincing phishing emails and execute sophisticated social engineering schemes, making these threats increasingly difficult for humans to detect. In response, leading email security platforms are adopting the same cutting-edge technologies, using NLP and LLMs to programmatically analyze email content, identify subtle indicators of malicious intent, and enhance the precision of their defenses. This evolving battle illustrates the dual-edged nature of technological innovation in cybersecurity—where the tools that empower defenders can also be weaponized by attackers and showcases how organizations must rely on good AI to stop the impact of bad AI.

The trends highlighted in Gartner’s research underscore a critical shift in how organizations must approach email security. Strong AI capabilities, social graph analysis, identity context, and API-first architectures, are no longer optional features—they are foundational requirements for defending against today’s most sophisticated attacks.

The way forward is clear: in order to stay ahead of threats, security leaders must adopt advanced, integrated email security platforms that outpace attackers with cutting-edge AI technology. Abnormal Security leads this evolution by proactively detecting and neutralizing sophisticated threats and equipping organizations with the tools they need to stay secure. For businesses seeking a comprehensive, future-ready solution, Abnormal delivers the confidence to navigate today’s evolving digital threats.

See why Abnormal Security has been named a Leader in the December 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Email Security Platforms.