DefendTM

Advanced Inbound Email Threat Defense

Stop the breach today while building a more intuitive, security-aware workforce for tomorrow.

AI-Powered Email Security That Understands Humans

Today’s most dangerous threat is the bad actor with a good identity. KnowBe4 Defend moves beyond black-box decision-making by using behavioral AI and natural language processing (NLP) to map historical communication patterns to make smarter, more informed autonomous decisions. By identifying anomalies in intent and linguistic patterns, Defend catches more payload-free BEC and supply chain attacks that other layers miss.

Key Benefits of KnowBe4 Defend

1-CatchThreats

Catch the 30%+ of Threats Others Miss

On average, 12 phishing emails slip through M365 and SEG filters for every 10,000 received. Neutralize them before they reach the inbox.

2-BehaviouralChange

97% Reduction in Clicking Malicious Links

Stop users from proceeding with risky actions through high-visibility, real-time localized teachable moments.

Three arrows in multiple directions

Industry-Leading Versatility

The only vendor offering a choice between SMTP and Graph API deployments, both featuring real-time, point-of-risk user education.

Clock showing saving time

95% Operational Time Savings

Shift to a Human-on-the-Loop model. Let AI handle threat containment and triage, saving a 1,000-user organization 45 hours of weekly response time.

Filter and email

1.4 Billion Graymail and Spam Filtered per Year

Drastically reduces alert fatigue and inbox overload by removing millions of non-malicious distractions from your environment.

6-TeachableMoments

Localized Teachable Moments

Defend empowers your global workforce by moving beyond generic translation by using rewritten native content built for your workforce across the globe.

Clock showing saving time

No Update Time for Zero-Day Detection

AI detects the building blocks of phishing attacks without relying on reactive rule updating.

How Does KnowBe4 Defend Work?

Analyze

Defend's relationship DNA identifies shifts in tone or urgency: key indicators of compromised legitimate accounts.

Alert

Color-coded Outlook Category Tags or interactive banners provide visual cues in the inbox, allowing users to identify threats before reading the email.

Educate

Automated teachable moment emails provide detailed overviews tailored to each user to increase workforce vigilance.

Remediate

Collapses thousands of related threats into a single investigative view for mass, one-click remediation.

Deploy Your Way

Defend SMTP Email Flow

Strategic Metrics to Track with Defend

Defend allows your business to decouple growth from risk. As your headcount and revenue scale, your security incidents shouldn’t.

Incident Growth vs. Company Growth

Use behavioral AI and NLP to detect the 30%+ of sophisticated, polymorphic AI attacks that others miss. This ensures that increasing your headcount doesn't lead to a corresponding spike in breach activity.

Automated Response vs. Human Response

Create a Human-on-the-Loop model where Defend offloads the operational weight of triage to intelligent, autonomous systems. Detailed reporting provides visibility into which users are targeted and where to provide tailored, high-impact training.

Capacity Management

Visualize your productivity savings in relation to incoming alerts. This allows you to reshift your SOC team’s focus to pressing matters by automatically removing 35% of email noise from graymail and spam across all your employees' mailboxes.

Global Scalability

Protect employees across the globe with localized teachable moments that drive real behavior change.

The Mean Time Suite (MTTX)

Metric
KnowBe4 Defend's Impact
MMTD (Detect)
Behavioral AI catches zero-day BEC instantly by analyzing relationship DNA.
MTTT (Triage)
Eliminates bottlenecks by grouping thousands of related alerts into a single, manageable investigative view.
MTTI (Investigate)
Pushes threat verdicts directly into Microsoft Defender quarantine console to create a unified workflow for your SOC team.
MTTC (Contain)
Automatically removes suspicious emails from end user inboxes and puts in a quarantine folder for further review.
MTTR (Respond)
One-click remediation allows you to isolate and remove malicious emails from all inboxes simultaneously.

Key Features

Strategic Visibility & ROI Reporting

  • Quantify your SOC’s impact with boardroom-ready data. Visualize the exact volume of noise and threats removed from user inboxes.

  • Measure Productivity: Inform stakeholders exactly how much time and money the organization is saving by automating email security.

  • Capacity Management: Use precise metrics to understand the ratio of incoming alerts to SOC bandwidth, allowing you to reshift focus from manual triage to high-value strategic initiatives.
1-ROIReporting

AI-Driven Threat Detection & Relationship DNA

Catch the 30%+ of threats traditional secure email gateways (SEGs) miss. Defend uses self-learning AI and natural language processing (NLP) to map the historical communication patterns between your employees and their contacts.

  • Linguistic Anomaly Detection: Identifies sudden shifts in tone or urgency: the primary indicators of a compromised legitimate account (BEC).

  • Lower Attacker Dwell Time: Detect the low-and-slow lateral movement and zero-day campaigns instantly, dramatically reducing your Mean Time to Detect (MTTD).

Screenshot, microscope, phishing email, ai

Native Teachable Moments Localization

Empower your global workforce with security insights that actually land, not generic translations. Defend uses rewritten native content built for your global workforce.

  • Regionally Appropriate Accuracy: Provide nuanced language support in Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (Mandarin-Simplified), Dutch, English, French, French Canadian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish and Spanish (Latin America).

  • Reduced Admin Overhead: Prevent non-English speaking users from overwhelming IT with questions by providing clear, native-language explanations for why an email was deemed dangerous.

  • Global Program Completeness: Run a unified training program across all key regions without gaps, ensuring behavior change is driven even in high-revenue international markets.

3-NativeTeachableMoments

Seamless Integrations and Campaign-Level Scalability

Minimize context switching and eliminate admin friction. Defend offers industry-leading deployment versatility with both Graph API and SMTP options.

  • Organize and Respond: Collapse thousands of polymorphic threats into a single investigative view, applying mass remediation with one click to ensure consistent incident response process adherence. 

  • Native Microsoft Defender Quarantine Sync: Pushes threat verdicts directly into Microsoft Defender quarantine console, allowing your team to operate within a single, unified workflow.

4-IntegrationsScalability

Real-Time User Empowerment and Teachable Moments

Turn your workforce into a security asset. Instead of black-box security that silently quarantines, Defend provides interactive teachable moments to keep end users alert, engaged and aware of the threats in their inbox.

  • Humans-in-the-Loop: Color-coded banners and tags stop 97% of users from proceeding with risky actions. Automated teachable moments explain the why behind an action.

  • Boosted eNPS: Transform the security team from a bottleneck into an educational partner, building a positive relationship between the SOC and the business through transparency and empathy.

5-RealTimeMoments

Trusted by Customers

"KnowBe4 Defend has been a game changer."

Defend’s value is proven every day in the statistics shown in its threat intelligence dashboard. The banners have also dramatically increased employees’ everyday vigilance to phishing attacks.

The City of Edinburgh Council | Mark Burtenshaw, ICT Manager Security and Compliance

We recognized that one layer is not enough to detect and neutralize the numerous advanced phishing threats targeting GMMH day-to-day work. KnowBe4 Defend not only provides an additional layer of defense but also supplements our security awareness training. Defend’s clickable banners allow employees to continuously develop their cybersecurity awareness.

GMMH | Kevin Orritt, Cyber Security Manager

We were looking for a new solution that went above and beyond the SEG – and that’s exactly what Defend has given us. It has optimized every aspect of our email security, from detection and remediation to security awareness training.

Shields Health Solutions | Principal Security Engineer

The prompts are one of the things that drew us to [Defend]. We want to allow employees to find those smaller breadcrumbs and really help find anything that might be a very elusive-type of risk.

First Community Credit Union | Bryan Perkola, Senior VP of Information Security

Industry Recognition

G2 Spring 2026 SAT Grid Badge
G2BestSoftware2026-Badge-CoreSegment-BestSoftwareProducts-1
buyer-s-choice-2026-gradient
G2 Winter 2026 Leader
Gartner-Peer-Insights_2025

KnowBe4 named a Leader in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Email Security Platforms

KnowBe4 has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Email Security Platforms for the second consecutive year — and we're offering you complimentary access to the full report.

See KnowBe4 Defend™ in Action

Learn how Defend™ strategically enhances Microsoft 365 native security to catch the threats Secure Email Gateways (SEGs) and others miss.

Gartner, Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’: Email Security Platforms, Peer Contributors, July 4, 2025.

Gartner and Peer Insights™ are trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences, and should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.