Rate Enhances Security and Scalability with Human Behavior AI from Abnormal

Rate Companies has grown from a local lender in 2000 to a major player in the U.S. mortgage market and a leading fintech firm. With nine mortgage origination companies, a national insurance company, and a national title company—plus partners in real estate, construction, insurance, and more—Rate is aiming for the top spot in a crowded industry. The company’s strategy is to improve customer experience through technology-enabled innovations like Rate's Same-Day Mortgage offering, improved customer authentication, and human behavior AI from Abnormal for stronger protection of customer data.

Rate's security operations team must protect sensitive customer data and comply with privacy regulations in multiple states. Before switching to Abnormal, Rate had a traditional secure email gateway (SEG) in front of its Microsoft 365 email platform for email security. “It felt redundant paying for a SEG while using Microsoft’s native security tools, and things were still getting through,” said Darin Hurd, EVP and CISO.

In addition to spam, a rising number of credential phishing and extortion attacks were reaching user inboxes. “One extortion campaign required a large amount of my team’s time, mostly dealing with SEG support,” said Jason Thorn, Director of Security Operations and Incident Response.

“Before Abnormal, my team spent half of each day reviewing and responding to email incidents. Now, we spend a couple of hours a month. Abnormal's behavioral AI and automation handle the rest, so we can be more proactive and work on projects that make Rate even more efficient and secure.”
—Jason Thorn, Director of Security Operations and Incident Response

As SEG contract renewal time neared, Hurd and Thorn explored the market. “AI was a secondary consideration at first, but it became clear we needed it to detect threats and reduce false positives as attack methods change,” Thorn said. An easy-to-use dashboard and API-based design were also mandatory features of a modern email security solution. According to Thorn, “Abnormal looks modern, and it was easy to run the POV and move into production. We quickly realized that we could reduce our email security maintenance and troubleshooting workload with this platform.”

“The POV dashboard allowed us to see everything Abnormal would have blocked,” Hurd added. “It was clear from the results that an investment in Abnormal would realize value fast.”

Abnormal’s human behavior AI and automation provided the detection and efficiency improvements Rate sought and also allowed Hurd to remove the SEG from the security stack. “We’ve seen multiple value results: 98% fewer phishing attacks reaching inboxes, less spam, and faster and more informative responses to user reports,” Thorn said. He added that without the SEG, email delivery no longer has an up to seven-minute delay. “That speed matters for our loan officers and customers, especially at closings.”

Abnormal has made Rate more efficient in other ways, too. In the first month, the Email Productivity module saved 8,047 employee and VIP hours on graymail filtering—allowing users to focus more on their core tasks and the customer experience. In addition, the AI Security Mailbox module has also given the SOC team more time for other security tasks.

“Abnormal made it easy to see what our SEG was missing. We set up the POV in a few minutes and then there were a lot of ‘Aha!’ moments about what the SEG wasn’t finding. It was clear right away that Abnormal could deliver better protection and a quick time to value.”
—Darin Hurd, EVP and CISO

Hurd and Thorn said they’re happy with the quality of the relationship between Rate and Abnormal. “The Abnormal account team is proactive in a way we didn’t have before,” Hurd said.

The duo plan to integrate Abnormal with their CrowdStrike instance, and they expect Abnormal to adapt to meet their evolving security and efficiency needs as they grow. “Abnormal’s ongoing R&D investment is clear,” Hurd said. “As more threats leverage AI to avoid detection, we now have a security partner that also utilizes AI so we can stay a step ahead.”