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Understanding the competition

Abnormal AI vs. Mimecast

Abnormal is designed to analyze inbound email via API integration, ensuring broad behavioral analysis coverage across your email traffic.

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Award-Winning Recognition

Trusted by more than 3,000 customers—including 20% of the Fortune 500

The Result

Comprehensive Behavioral AI Protection

Traditional Approaches Only Catch Traditional Threats

Modern email attacks rarely contain known-bad indicators of compromise that traditional threat detection relies on. Instead, cybercriminals are exploiting trust, legitimate infrastructure, and security blind spots through socially engineered attacks. Abnormal has witnessed threat actors:

  • Use QR codes and social engineering, not payloads.
  • Launch attacks from compromised internal and vendor accounts.
  • Abuse OAuth tokens and bypass MFA.

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Abnormal Protects Customers Using Behavioral AI

Our Behavioral AI works by:

  • Analyzing every single post-SEG email along with over 50,000 behavioral signals.
  • Our contextually rich analysis thoroughly models each account’s and vendor’s behavior.
  • As a result, we detect the most subtle anomalies that signal an advanced, IOC-free socially engineered attack.

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Mimecast’s Behavioral Analysis Uses A Narrow Scope

Mimecast claims to offer behavioral analysis—but their approach is fundamentally different:

  • They begin by scanning messages using static rules and know-bad threat signatures.
  • Next, they apply Natural Language Processing to the subset of messages flagged as anomalous.
  • This limits coverage and increases the risk of missing sophisticated threats like account takeovers and vendor compromises.
Source

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Read more about how Abnormal detected invoice and vendor fraud attempts that Mimecast missed.

Abnormal’s Advanced Protection

VIP and Internal Employee Impersonation (Without Payloads)

Abnormal is designed to detect and remediate these attacks by:

  • Baseline modeling of every account's normal communication behavior.
  • Using NLP and Behavioral AI to detect tone, urgency, and role-based anomalies.
  • Fully automated detection and remediation across all messages.
Mimecast’s Natural Language Processing only analyzes messages flagged by CyberGraph, meaning most emails—especially from known senders—aren’t scanned, limiting detection of payload-less impersonation attacks.

One-to-One Spear Phishing (New Senders, No Payloads)

Abnormal is designed to detect these attacks through:

  • Behavioral context, such as a never-before-seen sender.
  • Identification of unexpected communication patterns.
  • NLP-based detection of urgency, financial intent, or manipulation.
Mimecast's rule-based and NLP-layered detection may be less effective in detecting payload-less, socially engineered attacks due to its reliance on known-bad IOCs, domain reputation, and rule-based filtering—none of which provide the contextual understanding needed to catch advanced threats.

How Abnormal Delivers on Key Customer Needs Compared to Mimecast

Value

Mimecast SEG

Mimecast Cloud Integrated (CI)

Abnormal AI

Onboarding

Mimecast SEG

Typically multi-week setup with PS assistance

Mimecast Cloud Integrated (CI)

Typically 30-60 minutes setup (basic transport rules)

Abnormal AI

Deploys typically in under 30 seconds via API

Threat Detection

Mimecast SEG

Static rules, reputation checks, malware scans

Mimecast Cloud Integrated (CI)

Same engines as SEG; NLP applied post-CyberGraph

Abnormal AI

Behavioral AI is designed to analyze 100% of messages against dynamic user/vendor baselines

ATO Protection

Mimecast SEG

Limited; no identity signal integration

Mimecast Cloud Integrated (CI)

No detection of login anomalies or MFA changes

Abnormal AI

Behavioral AI helps detect and remediate ATOs

VEC Protection

Mimecast SEG

Spoofed domain detection via DMARC

Mimecast Cloud Integrated (CI)

Header analysis only; lacks behavioral insight

Abnormal AI

Detects compromised vendors with VendorBase™ across 3,000+ orgs

Maintenance

Mimecast SEG

Requires ongoing policy tuning

Mimecast Cloud Integrated (CI)

Minimal tuning, limited configuration

Abnormal AI

Self-learning; no rule-writing or tuning required

The Results Speak for Themselves

Win Rate

Abnormal is frequently chosen in head to head evaluations against Mimecast.

Time To Value

Deploys in minutes, no configuration needed

3,000+

Protects over 3,000 organizations, including more than 22% of the Fortune 500
OUR IMPACT

With our previous SEG, the features got shinier, the knobs turned a bit differently, but the core technology had been the same for quite some time. Abnormal’s AI is constantly learning and retraining, getting updates in near real-time, with auto-remediation and automation we can trust. We went from 12 FTEs for email security to 1/4 FTEs with Abnormal.”

— Director of Information Security, Fortune 50 Retailer
Why Enterprises Choose Abnormal
OUR IMPACT

We have every SEG known to man, but threat actors are targeting manufacturing more, and we never want to lose factory availability. Approximately 50-60% of those attacks are initiated through phishing, but traditional SEGs can’t look at the context of what’s in an email to block them…The only way to combat that social engineering is with a product like Abnormal that uses AI to understand email content and context.”

— Jeff Deakins, Director, Information Security and Infrastructure at Marmon Holdings
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OUR IMPACT

The realization of value [with Abnormal] was almost immediate—real-time visibility into attacks going on in the environment that are bypassing the traditional defenses. Abnormal provides the ability for us to scale with confidence, because we know that we’re going to get the same quality of protection at one person as at 28,000.”

— Ryan Fritts, CISO at ADT
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OUR IMPACT

From day one, Abnormal has made it simple. They have been consultative and proactive, showed quick value upon integration, and the decision to switch was easy when we realized the time savings and greater protection we got from a better partner.”

— CISO, Fortune 200 FinTech
See the AI Automation
OUR IMPACT

Abnormal provided a clear improvement over Proofpoint in both detection and cost savings. The transition was smooth, and the results speak for themselves.”

—CISO, F1000 Manufacturer
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DISCLAIMER: The foregoing is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Abnormal AI’s products remains at the sole discretion of Abnormal AI and is subject to change. The comparative statements are based on publicly available information as of May, 2025 and may not reflect the most current configurations or features.