Overview

Phishing Emails

• Phishing is the most common cybercrime, with 3.4 billion phishing emails sent daily worldwide.
• While exact daily time loss per employee isn’t universally reported, studies estimate that employees spend 20–30 minutes per day dealing with suspicious emails (identifying, reporting, or deleting them) in organizations with high email volumes.  This includes time lost to distractions and recovery from workflow interruptions.
• For companies hit by phishing, the average breach costs $4.8 million, partly due to productivity loss and remediation efforts.

Fraudulent Online Contacts (Scams)

• 73% of U.S. adults have experienced some form of online scam or attack, and these interruptions often occur weekly. 
• Spam calls alone waste ~9 minutes per week per person, which equals ~1.3 minutes per day—and that’s just phone calls
• When factoring in scam emails, fake social media messages, and fraudulent web chats, conservative estimates indicate that daily time lost is 10–15 minutes per individual, particularly for those in customer-facing roles.

Chatbot Scams & AI Impersonation

• AI-driven impersonation scams surged 148% between 2024 and 2025, with fake chatbots mimicking customer service agents and tricking users into sharing sensitive data.
• While evidence on time wasted with complex numbers is scarce, anecdotal evidence and security reports suggest that employees spend 5–10 minutes per incident verifying legitimacy when interacting with suspicious chatbots or automated messages.

Combined Impact

For a typical knowledge worker:

• Phishing emails: ~20–30 minutes/day

• Fraudulent contacts (calls, messages): ~10–15 minutes/day

• Chatbot scams: ~5–10 minutes/day

  Total: ~35–55 minutes per day lost to handling or recovering from these threats.

Table summarizing time lost per threat type:

Annual productivity cost per employee (based on an average hourly wage) to this table?

U.S. average hourly earnings for private employees were $36.67 (Sep 2025) and 261 workdays in 2025.

Formula used:
Annual cost = (minutes lost per day ÷ 60) × (workdays per year) × (hourly wage).

Assumptions & sources

• Hourly wage: $36.67 (Average Hourly Earnings, total private, Sep 2025).
• Workdays in 2025: 261 workdays (standard 5-day weeks, excluding holidays/vacation).
• Context on prevalence & time burden (for why these minutes are reasonable as planning assumptions):
• Spam/phone scams alone consume ~9 minutes/week per person (≈1.3 minutes/day).
• IT/security teams report ~27.5 minutes to handle a single phishing email (indicates high per-incident time cost for remediation, even if not every employee handles triage).
• Phishing volume remains substantial (billions of emails per day), resulting in persistent employee exposure.

Annual productivity cost for a 100-person team:

Annual productivity cost for a 500-person team:

Annual productivity cost for a 1,000-person team:

Effectiveness of AI Filters

• Modern AI-powered email security systems achieve over 99% accuracy in detecting phishing and spam, significantly outperforming traditional rule-based filters that average around 60%, underscoring their reliability in threat detection.
• Microsoft’s Language AI for phishing detection reports 99.9998% accuracy and blocks 1 million phishing emails daily. 
• Deep learning models such as BERT and RoBERTa achieve ~99% detection accuracy in controlled tests. 

Impact on Time Lost

• If AI filters block approximately 99% of phishing and fraudulent emails, the time lost per employee, previously 35–55 minutes daily, could decrease to less than 1 minute daily for residual threats, highlighting a substantial productivity improvement.
• That’s a 97–98% reduction in wasted time, translating into significant productivity gains.

Estimated Savings

Using our earlier cost model:

• Current annual cost per employee: $5,580–$8,770.
• With AI filters (98% reduction): $112–$175 per employee.
• Savings per employee: $5,400–$8,600 annually.

For different team sizes:

ROI Perspective

• Average cost of a data breach: $4.45M (IBM).
• AI-driven security automation reduces breach costs by $2.2M on average. 
• Preventing even one major phishing breach can justify the entire AI investment.

Estimate of AI email filter implementation costs based on current enterprise pricing:

Microsoft Defender for Office 365

• Plan 1: $2/user/month
• Plan 2: $5/user/month (includes advanced threat hunting and automation)
• For 1,000 employees, annual cost:
• Plan 1: $24,000
• Plan 2: $60,000

Proofpoint

• Essentials (SMB): $2–$5/user/month
• Enterprise bundles: $25–$70/user/year
• Full-featured suites can exceed $100,000 annually for large deployments.  underdefense
• For 1,000 employees, mid-tier enterprise:
• $25,000–$70,000/year

Mimecast

• Pricing is comparable to Proofpoint, typically $3–$ 6 per user per month for core email security, with advanced plans negotiated at enterprise scale. 
• For 1,000 emIntegration6,000–$72,000/year

Implementation & Hidden Costs

• Setup & Integration: $10,000–$50,000 (depending on complexity and whether managed service is used).
• Training & awareness programs: $15–$30/user/year for phishing simulations and security training.
• Ongoing maintenance: Usually included in subscription, but advanced analytics or compliance modules may add $5,000–$20,000/year.

ROI Snapshot

• For 1,000 employees, annual productivity savings from AI filters: $5.47M–$8.60M (based on earlier calculations).
• Estimated annual cost for AI email security: $60K–$150K (including setup amortized over 3 years).
• ROI: > 35x return in year one, even before factoring in breach prevention.

Cost comparison of popular AI email filter plans based on typical enterprise pricing:

Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Proofpoint

Mimecast

Additional Costs

• Setup & Integration: $10,000–$50,000 (one-time)
• Training & Awareness: $15–$30/user/year
• Advanced Analytics/Compliance: $5,000–$20,000/year

Closing Paragraph:

The cost of wasted time from phishing emails, fraudulent contacts, and chatbot scams is staggering, reaching millions annually for large organizations.  Implementing AI-powered email filters offers a near-immediate return on investment, reducing productivity losses by up to 98% and mitigating the risk of costly breaches.  With annual savings that can exceed $8 million for a 1,000-person team, the case for adopting advanced AI security solutions is clear: it’s not just a cybersecurity measure, it’s a strategic business decision that pays for itself many times over.