Denison University Protects an Open Campus Community with Abnormal AI

Founded in 1831 and set on a hilltop campus in Granville, Ohio, Denison University is one of the country’s oldest liberal arts colleges. Its roughly 2,500 undergraduates all live on campus, making Denison a fully residential community where students, faculty, and staff work side by side across every academic division. That close-knit model shapes how the university operates: independent-minded, deeply collaborative, and built around giving each student room to pursue their own path.

The Denison University Email Security Challenge

Higher education runs on openness, which makes it a favorite target. Denison’s community spans thousands of faculty, staff, and students, many of whom have never worked in an enterprise environment, and any control that slows their work gets worked around. Google Workspace caught 99% of spam and malicious mail, but the last 1% got through: the most sophisticated threats that actually stole money, credentials, and personal information. A compromised account could sit unnoticed long enough to do real damage. And a lean security team that also owns third-party risk and end-user training couldn’t keep pace with attackers manually. That’s when Denison turned to Abnormal.

Customer Key Challenges:

• Google Workspace’s native filtering caught spam and commodity threats, but missed the most damaging 1% of email attacks.
• Compromised accounts went undetected for too long.
• Lean security team couldn’t realistically triage user-reported phishing emails.

“Our goal by bringing Abnormal on board was to ruin our attackers’ ROI while making sure that our solution addressed the core people-and-process issues that often cause products to fail.” — Sejin Kim, Cybersecurity Engineer

The Abnormal AI Solution

Denison deployed Abnormal alongside Google Workspace rather than replacing it. Inbound Email Security detects the advanced attacks Google’s filters miss by building behavioral models for every sender, then remediates them automatically. Account Takeover Protection reads identity signals across the tenant and surfaces a compromise far earlier than the team would catch it alone. Both run invisibly, by design. AI Security Mailbox works in the open: branded “Is It Safe” at the University, AISM analyzes every message reported by users and replies with immediate feedback on the judgement. Additionally, the University relies on Abnormal’s Email Productivity to personalize and automate graymail management.

Abnormal Solution:

• Inbound Email Security stops the advanced attacks Google Workspace’s filters miss before they reach a mailbox.
• Account Takeover Protection flags compromised accounts early and shrinks the blast radius of every incident.
• AI Security Mailbox, branded “Is It Safe” on campus, triages every user report and provides immediate feedback automatically.

Why Denison University Chose Abnormal

Abnormal gave Denison’s small team leverage. Inbound Email Security catches both the 99% Google catches and the last 1% that used to succeed, so the messages that steal money and credentials are stopped before anyone sees them. Account Takeover Protection delivers a far earlier heads-up on a compromised account, and the team rebuilt its response process around that warning, limiting the blast radius significantly. AI Security Mailbox made reporting something people actually do: forwarding a suspicious message to “Is It Safe” mirrors a business process everyone already knows. That let Denison trade awareness training for a simpler ask, which is to check with an expert. Email Productivity keeps low-priority mail out of the way so attention lands on the mail that matters. None of it asks users to work around security to get their work done.

A Security Program Built for the People Who Use It

Denison’s shift from teaching everyone to spot a phish to teaching everyone to report suspicious mail is still spreading across campus, and the team keeps looking for work its people shouldn’t have to carry. Kim’s read on why the model holds is worth sitting with: tools that ignore people and process tend to last about a year. The ones that account for both become how an institution operates. For a university that has run on trust and openness since 1831, that distinction is the whole point.

“I don’t need my users to all be experts, but I do want them to know how to get in touch with one quickly and easily. While technology is a fantastic tool, it can’t solve people and process problems.” — Sejin Kim, Cybersecurity Engineer, Denison University

Abnormal Products in Use:

• Inbound Email Security
• AI Security Mailbox
• Account Takeover Protection
• Email Productivity