How AAA/Auto Club Group Protects the Information Highway with Abnormal

At Abnormal, our customers have always been our biggest priority. Customer obsession is one of our five company values, and we live this every single day as we provide the best email security protection available for the hundreds of companies who entrust us to protect their mailboxes. With customers from the Fortune 1000 to small non-profit organizations, Abnormal is dedicated to ensuring that they have an amazing experience, while blocking the malicious emails that could derail businesses.

So when Gopal Padinjaruveetil, Chief Information Security Officer of AAA/Auto Club Group (ACG), approached us to talk about Abnormal in Interface Magazine, we jumped at the opportunity to support him. As CISO of ACG, Padinjaruveetil is responsible for taking the organization into the digital age and providing a way for customers to trust the organization as they drive on the information superhighway.

As Padinjaruveetil states in the Interface article, “If cybercrime was a country whose wealth was measured through GDP, it would be the third richest country in the world. It’s now a ten-trillion dollar business that has overtaken the global drug trade. Meanwhile, organizations are investing just $150mn per year into cyber innovation. We as an industry need to do something to reduce this fast-increasing gap.”

This focus on cybercrime is why The Auto Club Group has partnered with leading cybersecurity companies across multiple areas—working with companies who share the same vision to deliver strategic benefits beyond the normal vendor-customer relationship. He has found that in his partnerships with OpenText, Netskpoke, and Abnormal Security. He dives into these relationships within the article, explaining why he chose these organizations over competitors.

When it comes to Abnormal, Padinjaruveetil was concerned about the prevalence of email threats, with 97% of attacks originating from social engineering or credential phishing and its resultant malware. With business email compromise and related attacks costing organizations billions each year, it became clear that ACG needed to protect its end users from the type of attacks that were bypassing native security controls. “Abnormal Security helped us to detect malicious communications and quarantine them before they can become a primary attack weapon.”

And because Abnormal uses a combination of identity, relationships, and behavior to understand normal communications—and then block abnormal communications—the platform can stop the most dangerous threats Padinjaruveetil sees. “Without Abnormal Security, our end users would still be receiving these malicious attacks and interacting with them, potentially costing us financial losses and reputational damage.”

As part of Padinjaruveetil’s role, he is responsible not only for the security of his organization, but also for the recruitment of future leaders and moving his role forward. As he states in the magazine, “We’re seeing the evolution of a modern CISO’s role much more into an executive cyber risk advisory role, and as a future risk manager communicating at board level about emerging technologies.”

This is the case across the entire cyber risk landscape, as he must be prepared to discuss all types of threats impacting the employees, partners, and customers of ACG. It’s why he finds vendors who can help him on this journey—not only protecting the organization, but also helping him understand the threat and explain it to the Board of Advisors, executive leadership team, and employees around the world.

Ultimately, Padinjaruveetil believes that the role of the CISO is to empower people and keep them safe as they drive down the information highway. Here at Abnormal, we’re excited to be on that journey with him, as we continue to keep The Auto Club Group safe from email-based cyber attacks.
Read more of Padinjaruveetil’s thoughts as CISO in the Interface Magazine article.