First thing you do every office day is to check your email inbox. One morning, you received an email from your best friend and the subject line is quite strange. What should you do?

Deleting the email without reporting it deprives the security team of a potential threat indicator and leaves the organization unaware of a possible phishing campaign or compromised account.

A supervisor is not trained in threat analysis; the correct escalation path for suspicious emails is the dedicated security response or SOC team, not management.

Forwarding the suspicious email to the security response team ensures trained professionals can analyze it for phishing, malware, or account compromise indicators before it can cause harm. Permanently deleting the message afterward removes the threat from your inbox and prevents accidental interaction. This follows standard security incident reporting procedures and protects both the individual and the organization.

Replying to a suspicious email may confirm your address as active to an attacker, trigger auto-execution of malicious content, or provide a social engineering foothold.