Inside Abnormal Innovate: A Summit Built for Security Leaders

AI has changed the rules of email security.

Attacks that once took hours to craft now launch in seconds and target people, not infrastructure. Phishing, impersonation, and social engineering are faster, more scalable, and harder than ever to detect.

Stopping these threats requires more than a new feature set. It requires a new foundation. That’s what drives Abnormal Innovate: Summer Update, the virtual summit built to explore what’s next in AI-powered email security.

This isn’t just a product showcase. It’s a curated, choose-your-own-adventure summit built for security leaders and practitioners looking to set the new gold standard in AI-native cybersecurity.

Innovate: Summer Update opens with a keynote from Abnormal CEO Evan Reiser, who shares five contrarian takes on the future of cybersecurity—covering everything from the failure of perimeter-based defense to the downstream impact of black-box AI.

The keynote is a direct challenge to the assumptions holding the industry back, and an executive-level glimpse into how Abnormal is building differently.

Paired with Evan’s keynote are sessions that extend this future-facing lens, including:

• Inbox Under Siege, on how attackers are using generative AI to scale identity-based threats.

• Phishing for Needles, on SOC burnout in a world of alert overload.

• Why Attackers Love Your Email Settings, which walks through the overlooked misconfigurations that open the door to compromise.

Most sessions are under 15 minutes, offering clear, focused insight into what teams are up against and what’s working for experts on the front lines.

Innovate: Summer Update is intentionally structured for security teams who don’t have hours to spare. There’s no rigid agenda. No need to block off a full day. Just focused, high-signal sessions delivered in a format that works on your terms.

You can explore the content by role, topic, or challenge. Watch your chosen sessions over coffee or build your own track across the day. Plus, every session is eligible for CPE credits through ISC2.

A major theme across the Summer Update sessions is removing friction, whether that’s alert fatigue, configuration sprawl, or the human blind spots attackers love to exploit.

In Behind the Screens, Abnormal experts show how behavioral AI is helping SOC teams filter out noise and focus only on what’s worth investigating. The takeaway isn’t just that detection is better—it’s that humans are wasting less time on the wrong things.

For Microsoft 365 environments, Holistic M365 Protection walks through how posture drift happens in the real world, and how to address it without endless rule-tuning or manual reviews.

And Security Coaching in the Age of AI shifts the spotlight to employees, showing how behavioral signals can be used not just to catch mistakes, but to reinforce good security decisions in the moment.

Alongside these sessions, attendees will also see new product capabilities in action, including AI agents that improve security awareness training and streamline threat reporting. These aren’t cosmetic features. They’re purpose-built to reduce cognitive load, eliminate low-value tasks, and let your people spend more time doing the work only humans can handle.

One of the most anticipated sessions at Summer Update is our live customer panel, featuring John Barrow, CISO at JB Poindexter & Co., and Gareth Packham, CISO at Save the Children International. They’ll share how their teams are addressing modern email threats, evaluating email security platforms in a crowded market, and partnering with Abnormal to streamline investigations and reduce operational overhead.

Later, Field CISOs Mick Leach and Patricia Titus take live questions from attendees in an Ask Me Anything session. This hot-seat chat is unscripted, unrehearsed, and shaped entirely by what matters to the audience. From vendor accountability to threat intelligence, no topic is off limits.

Abnormal Innovate: Summer Update kicks off July 17 and registration is open now.

Whether you're leading strategy, running investigations, managing infrastructure, or supporting your team on the front lines, this event is built to deliver fresh insight, practical ideas, and a clear look at what great email security can—and should—look like.

Register today to save your spot, and be among the first 100 live keynote attendees at 11am ET to receive an Abnormal Summer Kit and enter the raffle for a Nintendo Switch 2.