Data as of Aug 25, 2026 · Based on 336 AI responses from ChatGPT Search and Google AI Mode · See how Parse measures this
For automated phishing and BEC response, Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR and Cymph Playbook Hub are top choices, offering pre-built and community-driven orchestration. For manual procedural guidance and framework structure, NIST SP 800-61 and
FRSecure remain the primary standards for creating effective response plans.
Brands AI recommends here
Best for teams using automated security platforms. It provides pre-built, ready-to-run playbooks that handle incident investigation, email enrichment, and automated remediation tasks directly in the engine.
Best as an open-access community library. With over 700 vendor-agnostic playbooks, it allows security analysts to view and modify workflows in-browser, making it excellent for teams needing flexible, customizable response logic.
Best for established, standard-based procedural guidance. NIST SP 800-61 is the industry reference for shaping your general incident handling strategy before drafting specific technical instructions for your team.
Best for organizations needing clear, manual-process documentation. They offer a downloadable Business Email Compromise playbook that provides a logical, step-by-step guide useful for immediate human-led incident response.
For phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) response, the “best” playbook library depends on whether you need SOC operations, enterprise incident response, or SOAR automation. The strongest options are:
Best for: most organizations building or refreshing an IR program.
Why:
Good starting points:
Best for: organizations using Exchange Online, Microsoft Defender, and Entra ID.
Strengths:
Best for: teams designing repeatable analyst workflows.
Strengths:
Best for: teams wanting reusable IR runbooks and examples.
Strengths:
A good library should have separate playbooks for:
Phishing email reported
validate sender/domain
analyze headers
identify recipients
detonate URLs/attachments
remove messages
block indicators
Credential phishing
force password reset
revoke sessions/tokens
review MFA changes
investigate mailbox access
hunt for persistence
BEC / executive impersonation
verify payment-change requests out of band
involve finance/legal
preserve evidence
check for mailbox rules and forwarding
review vendor/customer communications
Post-incident improvement
update detections
tune email controls
conduct user awareness follow-up
document lessons learned
For a modern enterprise SOC:
If you mean a downloadable library of ready-to-import SOAR playbooks (Splunk SOAR, Cortex XSOAR, Sentinel, Tines, etc.), the recommendation changes.
When looking for the best playbook library for phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) response, the "best" choice depends on whether you need open-source operational documentation, automated SOAR workflows , or regulatory/framework guidelines.
The top playbook libraries and repositories categorized by their utility for Phishing and BEC are outlined below:
If you are implementing automated ingestion (e.g., user-reported phishing mailboxes) and auto-remediation (purging emails, resetting compromised Microsoft 365/Google Workspace tokens):
To help narrow down the ideal resource for your team, tell me:
If you mean a practical library of reusable SOC/IR playbooks, my top pick for phishing + BEC is Microsoft’s Incident Response Playbooks, especially if you’re operating Microsoft 365.
I'd not use a single "BEC playbook." I'd have a parent BEC workflow that branches into:
The critical BEC-specific addition is a business-fraud containment track alongside the technical IR track: freeze/recall suspicious payments where possible, contact the legitimate vendor/customer using a trusted channel, preserve the fraudulent correspondence, identify all affected transactions, and involve finance/legal/leadership according to predefined thresholds.
Bottom line: Start with Microsoft's playbooks for the analyst-level procedures, and use NIST/CISA as the governance/framework layer. That's a stronger combination than looking for one giant generic BEC playbook.
If you're building this for a SOC/SecOps team, I can also compare the best free playbook libraries (Microsoft, CISA, NIST, SANS, Splunk, Palo Alto, CrowdStrike, etc.) specifically for BEC coverage and automation depth.
When looking for the best playbook library for phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) response, the "best" choice depends on whether you need a conceptual framework (process/steps), an automation library (SOAR workflows), or open-source community templates.
Top-tier playbook libraries and resources for phishing and BEC response are organized by use case below:
If you are looking for ready-made logic, API integrations, and automated containment steps (like revoking sessions, purging emails, and isolating mailboxes):
If you need comprehensive, human-readable documentation, checklists, and procedural steps aligned with industry standards:
Key Components a Good Phishing/BEC Playbook Must Include:
Whichever library you lean on, ensure your chosen playbook covers these critical paths specific to BEC/Phishing:
To help narrow down the best specific template for your team, tell me:
There is no single "best" library because the ideal choice depends on whether you need a conceptual framework (to read and adapt manually), an open-source automation library (for SOAR platforms like Cortex XSOAR or Tines), or a commercial vendor ecosystem (built directly into your email security stack).
The top playbook libraries for Phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) response are categorized below by use case:
LetsDefend/incident-response-playbooks or austinsonger/Incident-Playbook): Community-driven repositories map real-world email threats directly to the MITRE ATT&CK framework (T1566 - Phishing) . They provide markdown-based, step-by-cards for analysts on how to parse email headers, check URL/domain reputations via VirusTotal, and check for malicious inbox rules in M365.If you use a Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) tool, you want native integrations that ingest user-reported phish and automatically parse headers, extract IOCs, and purge emails:
If your primary stack lives in Microsoft 365 or specialized email security platforms, the best "library" is the one natively integrated with your API connectors:
What a Strong Phishing & BEC Playbook Must Include
Whichever library you choose, ensure your active implementation explicitly segments Phishing from BEC:
If you share what SOAR platform or email gateway you use (e.g., Microsoft Defender, Tines, Splunk, or Palo Alto), I can point you toward the exact integration pack or repository folder best suited for your setup.
If you mean a practical library your SOC can actually use during phishing/BEC incidents, my top pick is Microsoft’s Incident Response Playbooks, especially if you run Microsoft 365.
Microsoft Incident Response Playbooks — best overall
CISA Incident Response Playbook — best foundational framework
Incident Response Playbooks Gallery — good visual/reference library
SANS playbook guidance — best for building your own
I'd not use a generic "phishing playbook" as your entire BEC procedure. A mature BEC playbook should branch depending on whether you have:
Phish received → credential entered → account compromised → mailbox accessed → forwarding/rules created → attacker impersonates executive/vendor → payment requested → payment sent.
The crucial BEC-specific actions are then things like:
Microsoft's current phishing guidance is particularly strong on the identity/mailbox side, including forwarding rules, delegated access, sign-ins, OAuth consent, message tracing and endpoint correlation.
If I were building a SOC library today: I'd use CISA/NIST as the framework, Microsoft's playbooks as the technical runbooks, and add a custom BEC/payment-fraud playbook on top. That combination is considerably better than buying/using a single generic "phishing playbook."
If you tell me whether your stack is Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or mixed, I can point you to the best 10–15 playbooks to put in the library, including the exact BEC branches and escalation points.
If you mean a ready-to-adapt library of incident-response playbooks, my top pick is Microsoft’s Incident Response Playbooks, especially if your environment is Microsoft 365/Entra.
Microsoft Incident Response Playbooks — best overall for phishing/BEC
CISA incident-response playbooks — best vendor-neutral foundation
SANS — best for designing your own playbook program
I wouldn't use a phishing-only playbook as your BEC playbook. A good BEC runbook should branch into at least:
Suspected phish → credential/session compromise → mailbox persistence → internal/external impersonation → payment/invoice fraud → financial recall → identity remediation → evidence preservation → post-incident controls.
The financial-recall branch is particularly important: BEC response isn't finished just because you reset the user's password. Microsoft's BEC material and newer industry runbooks both emphasize mailbox-rule hunting, token/identity containment, and financial recovery.
If I were building a SOC library today: use CISA/NIST as the framework + Microsoft's phishing/BEC procedures as the technical playbooks + your own organization-specific decision trees for wire fraud, payroll diversion, vendor impersonation, and executive impersonation.
If you tell me whether you're primarily Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or mixed, I can point you to the best BEC/phishing playbook library specifically for that stack.
There is no single "best" static library because the right choice depends on whether you need open-source frameworks to customize, vendor-native playbooks built into your stack, or community-driven automation libraries for SOAR platforms.
The top options for phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) response are categorized below by use case:
counteractive/incident-response-plan-template ) — Excellent for modular, text-based markdown playbooks that cover header analysis, scoping, and dynamic URL sandboxing.If you tell me what email security or SIEM/SOAR tools you currently use (e.g., Microsoft Defender, Splunk, Cortex XSOAR, or generic email gateways), I can point you directly to the most compatible playbook formats for your stack.
If you mean a practical library of ready-to-adapt incident-response playbooks, rather than a single framework, my pick is:
It is unusually operational: it walks analysts through investigation and explicitly covers identity, email, endpoint, and post-compromise activity. It also maps well to Microsoft Defender/Sentinel environments, while the underlying workflow can be adapted to other stacks.
Use NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 as the backbone for your IR program. It's the current NIST incident-response guidance, published in April 2025, and is better suited to defining your overall process than serving as a phishing-specific analyst runbook.
This is useful when you want something you can actually hand to analysts and customize. Its phishing playbook follows Prepare → Detect → Analyze → Contain → Eradicate → Recover → Post-Incident Handling.
I would not treat BEC as merely a phishing playbook. Build a separate BEC branch covering:
NIST's phishing guidance explicitly recommends immediate password changes, notifying the appropriate internal responders, and contacting the financial institution when financial accounts may be affected.
My recommended stack: NIST 800-61 Rev. 3 → Microsoft phishing playbook → custom BEC playbook → SOAR automation. SANS also has a useful guide specifically on designing and operationalizing playbooks rather than treating them as static documents.
If you're building this for a SOC, I can also point you to the best free/open-source collection of phishing + BEC + account-compromise playbooks, including ones formatted for Splunk SOAR, Sentinel, Cortex XSOAR, and Shuffle.
When looking for the "best" playbook library for Phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) response, the right choice depends on whether you need actionable documentation/checklists for manual analysts, or machine-executable automation workflows for a SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) platform.
The industry’s top-tier libraries for phishing and BEC response are categorized below by use case:
If you need structured, human-readable standard operating procedures (SOPs) based on NIST guidelines or MITRE ATT&CK:
If you use automation platforms and need ready-to-import code/logic blocks:
If you want an end-to-end platform where the simulation, user-reporting, triage, and automated auto-quarantine playbooks live in a single ecosystem:
What a Great Phishing & BEC Playbook Must Include
Regardless of the library you choose, ensure your specific phishing/BEC playbook splits actions into distinct paths:
If you can share which SIEM/Email Security stack you use (e.g., Microsoft Defender, Splunk, CrowdStrike, or Mimecast) or whether you are looking for manual checklists vs. automated SOAR playbooks , I can recommend the most compatible library for your environment.