Abnormal Innovate: Summer Update wasn’t just another product webinar. It wasn’t designed to check a box or lure viewers to purchase under the guise of thought leadership. It was built as a focused summit for a time-constrained audience seeking substance, meant to challenge assumptions and surface unfiltered stories from the field.

In a space crowded with hour-long keynotes and overproduced panels, attention is fleeting and trust is hard-earned. This event aimed to change that—not by being louder, but by being smarter. That meant taking risks with the format: a 16-minute “micro-keynote” from CEO Evan Reiser, a live CISO AMA with zero slideware, and sessions that made room for real stories, not sales pitches.

The result? A new kind of virtual summit, built for defenders who’ve heard it all before. And now, every session from July 17 is available to watch on demand.

With thousands of registrants and strong engagement across tracks, Innovate Summer delivered a focused slate of sessions designed to raise the bar for what organizations should expect from their cybersecurity vendors. Our Innovate Content Hub allows viewers to explore these sessions by topic or challenge, and focus on what’s most relevant to their role.

Below are the sessions that resonated most with our live audience, and why they’re worth your time now.

Keynote: 5 Contrarian Takes on the Cybersecurity Industry and the Future of AI

Abnormal CEO Evan Reiser opened the summit with a 16-minute keynote challenging industry conventions, from automating the SOC to the decline of perimeter-based defense and the future of black-box AI. Designed to reframe how organizations think about detection, identity, and infrastructure, the keynote offers a clear introduction to the foundational ideas behind the Abnormal platform.

The Field CISO Hot Seat: Live AMA

Veteran security leaders Mike Britton, Patti Titus, and Mick Leach took live questions from attendees, covering everything from board-level pressure and burnout to evaluating AI claims in a crowded vendor landscape. No scripts, no slides. Just practical insight from three leaders who’ve managed real security programs under real constraints. This was the event’s top-rated session.

Behind the Screens: How SOC Teams Work Smarter With Abnormal AI

This demo session showed how AI-native automation is applied in production environments to streamline investigation, reduce manual triage, and improve detection coverage. Focused on real analyst workflows—not hypothetical outcomes—it was one of Innovate’s best-attended and most practical sessions.

Inside the AI Arms Race: How Cybercriminals Exploit Trusted Tools and Malicious GPTs

Threat actors aren’t waiting for the next breakthrough—they’re already using generative AI and legitimate interfaces to exploit human trust. This session breaks down real examples of malicious GPT activity, abuse of SaaS tools, and interface manipulation. The companion white paper remains the most downloaded asset from the summit.

1. Defenders are under-architected for AI-powered threats.

Too many organizations are still relying on rule sets, perimeter tools, and static policies to fight dynamic, identity-based, AI-enhanced attacks. Multiple Innovate sessions, from identity misconfigurations to GPT-powered phishing, underscored the same gap: without architectural change, automation alone won’t help.

2. AI-native defense isn’t about adding features. It’s about changing how work gets done.

Whether it was SOC teams filtering out low-confidence alerts or Microsoft 365 admins tackling hidden configuration risk, the most actionable sessions weren’t about surface-level tooling. They focused on reducing cognitive load for defenders: eliminating unnecessary decisions, simplifying investigation paths, and designing for outcomes, not just control.

3. “Good enough” detection isn’t good enough anymore.

The attacks showcased at Innovate are faster, more personalized, and more evasive than most traditional models can catch. Behavior-based defense and contextual AI are no longer future considerations. They’ve become baseline requirements for email security in 2025 and beyond.

4. Security leaders are asking more from vendors—and rightfully so.

CISOs at Innovate weren’t looking for innovation theater. They were asking for realism, clarity, and meaningful change. The strongest sessions didn’t just showcase solutions—they modeled how practitioners, vendors, and teams can work together to raise expectations and set a new gold standard for the industry.

Abnormal Innovate: Summer Update wasn’t built to showcase. It was built to shift the standard by designing for brevity, centering audience input, and making space for unfiltered expertise. That approach doesn’t end with one event. It extends into how we think about community, roadmap, and what defenders actually need—and deserve—from their vendors, especially as AI reshapes the threat landscape for decades to come.

To explore the full on-demand experience, visit our Abnormal Innovate Content Hub now.