Top email phishing scams SMBs can expect in 2026, and what to do about them 

Forecasting email risk for 2026 

Looking ahead at 2026, I think most people in the cybersecurity industry would agree: AI has introduced a revolutionary level of heightened threats coming from email phishing scams. 

Cheap AI has made it possible for anyone to produce a highly personalized email that’s tough to distinguish from a legitimate email from a co-worker, vendor, or even a family member. Now AI can translate convincingly into any language, code custom malware, generate startlingly high-quality voice, video, and audio deepfakes, and so much more. In general, we can no longer trust what we see or hear—and that goes double for our email inbox. 

So, what does this mean for the average small or medium-sized business that’s just trying to keep its email inboxes safe? Truthfully, it’s a bit of a good news/bad news situation. The bad news: Anyone with an ax to grind and a laptop can launch a sophisticated email attack against your company.  But here’s some good news. The tools we’re using to catch cyber thieves are using more advanced technologies, too. 

However, before we get into best practices for defense, let’s talk first about where the threat landscape stands for today’s companies. 

Email phishing scams 2026: How threats are changing 

According to Mimecast’s 2025 State of Human Risk Report, 95% of data breaches involve the human element. Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report for 2025 breaks it down further, showing that risks coming from third-party vendors doubled to approximately 30%, pointing to a growing sophistication in researched, targeted attacks. 

The days of easy-to-spot phishing tactics are over. No more loan requests from “Nigerian princes” or emails sent with egregious spelling errors and bad grammar. “Zscaler ThreatLabz 2025 Phishing Report” backs up this idea. Its analysis indicates that phishing volume declined overall but shifted to more customized campaigns aimed at high-value targets such as human resources, payroll, and finance departments. The report said these attacks were also more likely to use video phishing and CAPTCHAs (photo ID test) to evade filters. 

Perhaps that’s why cyberattacks in general seem to be getting more devastating. According to the latest FBI IC3 report on U.S. cybercrime in 2024, 859,532 complaints were registered with a  total of $16.6 billion in reported losses–up 33% year over year. Of that, $2.7 billion was specifically from business email compromise. 

Emerging email phishing scams to watch out for in 2026 

Threat no.1: Audio and video deep fake fraud 

Deep fakes have gotten publicity lately, mainly because they are frighteningly efficient. Today, scammers can now impersonate the voice and video image of nearly anyone starting with nothing more than a quick voice clip or a stolen headshot. The deep fakes aren’t just short, scripted outputs, either. Scammers can have deep-fake live conversations in real time. 

One of the most notable examples of this occurred recently at a Hong Kong finance firm, when a video deep fake version of its CFO convinced their finance department employee to transfer $25.6 million to a series of 15 different overseas bank accounts. The interaction began with an email, which then escalated to a meeting request for a live video call.  The employee chatted in real time with a live action deepfake CFO, who claimed to be with the board of directors and needed the money for upcoming investments. The perpetrators—and the money they stole—have never been found. 

This scam tech has nearly endless applications. Online guides are circulating the dark web, teaching people how to use deepfake AI to circumvent common “proof of life” checks for financial transactions and cryptocurrency purchases. Cybercriminals use fake résumés and AI deepfakes to get work-from-home jobs—interacting with HR, IT, and their new co-workers just long enough to dump malware into company systems and steal valuable company data.  

In a particularly depressing turn of events, a large number of actors are advertising on the dark web, offering to serve as the live-action talent behind the AI avatars used for deep fake crime. As the tools progress, so will the support industry around these scams. 

What to do about deep fake threats

Assume all voice and video requests could be fraudulent. This is especially true if it:  

• involves the transfer of large sums of money  

• includes the request for highly sensitive information 

• has an element of urgency 

• requires circumventing usual protocols or keeping the transaction confidential 

• requests funds or information go to a new bank account or email address 

Require enhanced verification. For transfers of any kind, require in-person verification by calling the recipient back at a phone number that can be independently verified. During live video calls, the requester should be required to display two pieces of identification. Predetermined code words or challenge questions can also help. 

Threat no. 2: Vendor email compromise (VEC) 

This complicated fraud starts with an incursion into your vendor’s mailboxes. Scammers then lurk in real threads, learning your communication patterns. Then they reply in thread with altered invoices or updated banking instructions. Because it’s coming from a trusted inbox, scammers don’t even need links or attachments to prompt action. 

Payloads from this type of gambit have been enormous. For instance, Reuters reported this year that Ireland’s National Treasury management agency, the state body that manages debt and sovereign wealth for the country, lost €5 million in a scam perpetrated by criminals impersonating a known investment partner. 

This kind of loss is not surprising. CSO reported that 72% of employees engaged in their test of vendor email compromise—90% higher than it would be in other kinds of business email compromise. 

What to do about VEC attacks: 

• Get AI-powered email analytics programs that detect subtle inconsistencies 

• Develop active vendor verification protocols whenever payments or sensitive information transfer is involved 

• Retrain employees on the new protocols, and educate them on social engineering attacks coming from vendor sources 

Threat no. 3: Quishing (QR code phishing) and MFA bypass 

QR codes can be the perfect threat vector because they’re not considered clickable links by the email filters and security gateways protecting your systems.  

Attackers place QR codes in email messages, flyers, or stickers—sometimes covering legitimate codes at parking meters, retail stores, office signage, or of course, emails. When scanned, these codes direct victims to phishing sites that mimic trusted brands like Microsoft, Adobe, Docusign, and even carefully crafted fake payment sites. They then ask for login credentials, payment details, or multifactor authentication tokens. 

QR Code Tiger recently reported on a variety of successful quishing scams, including fake parking tickets in San Francisco, QR codes for stealing credentials at Washington University, fake Microsoft 2FA expiring emails, and more. Online banking pages are particularly vulnerable. 

What to do about quishing scams: 

• Deploy AI-powered email security solutions that can scan and analyze QR codes embedded in images and attachments for malicious destinations. 

• Implement IP filtering and restrict access to sensitive systems from unregistered devices or locations. 

• Use advanced endpoint protection and mobile device management to monitor and block access to known phishing sites, even when accessed via QR codes. 

Threat no. 4: Polymorphic phishing 

Polymorphic phishing is a fancy way of saying that scammers flood the zone with highly personalized and varied messaging. Here’s why that causes stress on your security systems. 

Scammers start by creating similar but distinct versions of a phishing email as part of a targeted campaign. They then alter elements like the sender’s name and address, subject lines, and even the scam email’s body text. Artificial intelligence automates this process, creating personalized and convincing messages at scale. Traditional security tools rely on common patterns and signatures. Polymorphic phishing bypasses these by ensuring no two email messages are exactly alike, preventing detection by block lists and secure email gateways. 

Polymorphic capabilities are becoming standard in the automated phishing kits now available to scammers online. Even AI-based approaches to detection, such as natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) can suffer from polymorphic randomization. Attackers have become creative with many using polymorphic attacks with invisible characters to “break” these systems. 

What to do about polymorphic phishing: 

• Implement multifactor authentication methods that are resistant to phishing, such as biometrics or hardware tokens, to prevent credential theft even if an employee is tricked by a polymorphic email. 

• Extend monitoring beyond email to include SMS, collaboration apps such as teams or Slack, and social media, as polymorphic phishing can charge at multiple channels. 

• Combine multiple security layers, including endpoint protection, secure email gateways, behavioral analytics, and threat intelligence feeds. 

Use advanced email security solutions that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect subtle inconsistencies and patterns across large volumes of messages. These tools can spot the randomized elements of typical polymorphic phishing and adapt to new attack variants. 

Threat no. 5: HTML smuggling 

HTML smuggling is an advanced cyber-attack technique that uses legitimate HTML5 and JavaScript features to assemble and deploy malicious payloads directly onto a victim’s device. Here’s how it works. 

Malicious attackers will send a seemingly harmless HTML file through a phishing email. When the victim opens the HTML file in their web browser, an encoded or malicious script is opened. The script is too small to be flagged by security filters, because it’s embedded within the HTML file using various JavaScript features. The victim’s browser will decode and run the script, assembling the complete malicious payload onto the victim’s local machine. JavaScript triggers an automatic download of the completed malware behind the network firewall, which is why network-level security controls fail to detect the threat. 

While many users have been trained not to click on links in email messages, AI has made phishing emails much harder to detect overall. Victims may get an email that looks like an order confirmation from a favorite store, or an email from a family friend. The download seems to be generated from a legitimate website. In many cases, they may not know the link they clicked on had a silent script added. 

What to do about HTML smuggling: 

• Consider advanced security tools such as remote browser isolation (RBI) that can neutralize threats by isolating browsing activity in a secure, remote environment 

• Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools monitor and detect malicious scripts and suspicious file creation on endpoints 

Preventing email phishing scams: Why every organization should have email encryption as a start 

We’ve discussed a lot of different techniques for stopping scam emails. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the number of techniques and tools that are available to address these problems. So, the best way to get started on your email security is with a best-practice email encryption program. Look for a tool that offers end-to-end encryption with Smart DLP, which ensures sensitive data is either encrypted or blocked from leaving the organization. The best platforms will integrate natively with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, detecting inbound and outbound threats. Choose solutions that provide encrypted archiving, detailed reporting and support for regulatory requirements such as HIPAA for medical data, GDPR for purchase data, and FINRA for financial data. 

When you combine the latest email encryption tools with endpoint detection, identity management, user education, and a full cybersecurity stack, you’ll be ready to repel most of the scam email that comes your way.  

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