Top Canadian Law Firm Fasken Improves Security and Efficiency with Autonomous AI

Fasken is one of Canada's largest law firms and a global legal services leader with practice areas including banking and finance, litigation, environmental permitting, government relations, indigenous law, IT, intellectual property, and mergers and acquisitions. The firm's international roster of attorneys and clients generates a wide range of sensitive data that must remain secure. Fasken also prides itself on meeting the challenges of the future and helping its clients to do the same.

After dropping its SEG due to poor performance and high cost, the firm relied exclusively on Microsoft 365’s native email security tools. However, many social engineering, scam, and malicious payload attacks continued to reach inboxes.

"About six people a day were receiving phishing emails,” said Patrick Bryant, Manager of Information Security Architecture and Operations. “That didn't lead to an account compromise due to compensating controls, but we had 8-10 analysts constantly reviewing emails, and people were reporting emails not only to the investigations team but to executives and managers. It was merely a matter of time before something happened.”

“When a phishing message gets through, you don't know who you're dealing with or the potential implications of that conversation. Abnormal keeps phishing messages out of our inboxes so human behavior doesn’t lead to problems.”
—Patrick Bryant, Manager of Information Security Architecture and Operations

While discussing the advanced email threat challenge with colleagues from another major Canadian organization, Bryant heard about Abnormal. “They said, ‘We had the exact same issue as you. We got Abnormal and now we never have to deal with it.’”

Bryant and his team were impressed by the smoothness of Abnormal’s API-based integration with Microsoft and the absence of ongoing management requirements, as well as the additional visibility Abnormal provides. “When we look at our Microsoft email management, it's nice to be able to correlate it with what we're seeing in Abnormal.”

With Abnormal, the firm went from manually remediating an average of six phishing attacks per day to reviewing none. That gives the security team more time for threat hunting and ongoing education. “The time savings are astronomical—from 8-10 people spending hours each day on email to only one or two hours a month. We now have more time for red teaming, blue teaming, tabletop exercises, and other activities that improve our security posture and further protect our clients’ important data,” Bryant said.

Abnormal also filters graymail into a separate folder, saving Fasken more than 4,700 hours in the first 90 days. “My conservative estimate is that over 18,500 hours a year will be saved just from people not looking at graymail, leading to additional revenue opportunities for the firm. One of our partners told me Abnormal Email Productivity is the biggest improvement that IT has made for him in his entire career.”

“Moving to Microsoft Defender and implementing Abnormal have been our most effective security decisions. And nothing comes close to the positive impact for minimal effort that Abnormal delivers. If you want to improve your security posture with a couple of clicks, get Abnormal."
—Patrick Bryant, Manager of Information Security Architecture and Operations

With Abnormal stopping advanced threats, Fasken’s clients’ data is more secure. AI automation frees the security team to build on their strengths, and the whole firm benefits from less inbox clutter.

Bryant is now confident in Fasken’s ability to stay ahead of emerging threats, because of Abnormal’s human behavior AI focus and because the Abnormal team is so responsive. “My analysts open a ticket and get immediate replies. The Abnormal team is always ready to answer questions and work with us,” he said.