The Future of Cybersecurity is AI-Native: 5 Observations from Leading GTM at Abnormal Security

It’s been nearly a month since I started my new role as President of Abnormal Security, and what a month it has been. I’ve had the privilege of working at multiple high-growth cybersecurity companies throughout my career, but nothing has compared to the experience I’ve had at Abnormal in the last few weeks.

As I begin to have conversations with customers, sit in on sales meetings, and speak with team members across the organization, one thing continues to be clear: Abnormal is the future of cybersecurity. I couldn’t be more thrilled with what this team has already accomplished, but I’m even more excited about where we go next. Here are a few observations from my first month.

Over two decades ago, pioneers like Salesforce were attempting to challenge the status quo of on-premises software with a novel concept of cloud-native. These companies had a vision that was rooted in delivering value through the cloud, and they built teams to deliver that vision—with every line of code written specifically for the cloud. And as organizations eventually moved their operations to the cloud, these pioneers delivered a disproportionate amount of value to their customers, allowing them to leapfrog the competition.

The same thing is now happening with artificial intelligence in cybersecurity, as companies increasingly seek out AI-native technology to reimagine their operations. As AI changes the way the world uses software and the way that bad actors launch attacks, we know that it can also improve how organizations protect themselves.

AI-native cybersecurity companies are those that place AI at the core of their protection capabilities—capturing the same advantage that Salesforce had in the cloud-native era. As an AI-native company, Abnormal is poised to be that pioneer for cybersecurity, delivering superior value to our customers by putting the power of AI-based email attack detection directly in their hands against attackers.

Why is AI all the rage at this moment in time? Likely a combination of factors, but none more important than the launch of ChatGPT, which pushed AI capabilities outside of the small circles of technical developers and into the hands of the general population—including into the hands of cybercriminals.

Security leaders across organizations of all sizes are concerned about how generative AI will change the types and volumes of attacks that are targeting their employees, and they’re looking for vendors who are already able to stop these evolving threats. Here at Abnormal, we’re already starting to see generative AI used to create more sophisticated attacks—those without key indicators like syntax errors or grammatical mistakes.

As threat actors realize the power of generative AI, attacks will become nearly indistinguishable from legitimate emails, end users will no longer be able to detect threats, and security awareness training will become less valuable. In response, organizations must look for solutions that can detect and stop advanced attacks, particularly those generated by AI without traditional indicators of compromise, before they reach their end users. All of this means that reliance on our security solutions will become more important as security leaders look to good AI to protect them from bad AI.

For two decades, cybersecurity leaders have relied on armies of analysts to monitor lists of suspicious events and make judgment calls on what threats needed to be acted upon. And while this worked for some time, the massive increase in both volume and sophistication will make this impossible in the future. In fact, the recent intrusion into the Microsoft accounts of leading government agencies shows how long it can take for intrusions to even be found, let alone remediated.

The rise of AI enables us to rely less on manual intervention and more on automatic remediation, which is what Abnormal aims to provide to our customers. By enabling a cybersecurity platform to immediately detect and remediate these threats, attackers can be kicked out in seconds rather than weeks—providing better security for everyone. While this has long been the goal, it has felt more science fiction than reality, at least until now. In my conversations with our customers, it is clear that they are ready for this move to fully AI-automated security, and that Abnormal is the one to take them there.

Every company has at least a few customers who love the product, or they would no longer be in business. Talking to them tells you what you’re doing right and provides a sense of accomplishment, allowing you to celebrate what is going well. But talking to unhappy customers is one of my favorite parts of the job because it does the opposite: it tells you what you’re doing wrong and where you need to improve.

When I joined Abnormal, I tried to find those unhappy customers. I continue to be amazed because they simply aren’t out there. This company has over 1,300 happy customers. We have a 4.8 star rating on Gartner Peer Insights with over 160 reviews and were recently chosen as the Customer Choice for Email Security. That rarely happens in this industry, and when it does, it’s because you have a product that is easy to use and does what it's supposed to do. Abnormal is clearly excelling in both of those categories.

Abnormal was created as an AI company, focused first on the problem of email security. With over 4.3 billion people using email worldwide and billions lost via email each year, it only made sense to focus on the area where there was the largest need. That’s what we’ve done thus far, and what we’ve done so well.

But email security is only the first chapter in a very long book. As we continue to grow and expand our offerings, ultimately reaching our vision of becoming a fully automated cybersecurity platform, AI is how we will do it. We were born in AI. We’ve experienced a mountain of success through our focus on AI, recently reaching $100M ARR in only four years. But more importantly, we’re committed to the future of AI and to being your cybersecurity partner as that future unfolds.

When I first heard of Abnormal, I knew that this company was something special. There are very few companies in the world that have grown this fast in this market, with customers who are so pleased. The product installs in seconds via API and starts detecting anomalous activity immediately—with no professional services required.

Because of its ease of use and superior efficacy, we already protect more than 1300 companies, including 12% of the Fortune 500. We’ve expanded from the United States into Europe, Australia, and South America, and more companies are putting their trust in Abnormal every day. None of that would be possible with a product that truly works, and this team who built it.

But we’re just getting started, and I can’t wait to show you what is coming next.

Ready to see what Abnormal can offer you? Request a demo today to see why enterprises worldwide trust Abnormal to protect their employees.