dunnhumby Protects Its People with Abnormal AI

dunnhumby is a global consumer data science company with approximately 3,500 employees, serving the world's largest retailers and consumer brands. The company processes close to one billion customer profiles and operates across multi-cloud infrastructure, making it a high-value target for email-borne attacks. The Chief Security Officer of dunnhumby leads a 70-person security team responsible for protecting a business where a breach could significantly impact its standing in the market.

dunnhumby's Security Challenge

dunnhumby used to rely on a secure email gateway (SEG) that fell short on business email compromise detection, spam filtering, and phishing prevention. Security analysts spent considerable time manually triaging phishing reports, blocking URLs, removing senders, and fielding employee complaints about inbox clutter. The team needed a solution that would integrate cleanly with Microsoft 365 and reduce repetitive manual work without adding gateway infrastructure overhead.

Customer Key Challenges

• Business email compromise attacks consistently bypassed legacy gateway tools.
• Time-consuming, manual phishing triage burdened the security operations team.
• Graymail and spam cluttered employee inboxes, reducing productivity and spurring frequent complaints.

Abnormal Solution

• API-native integration with Microsoft 365 requires no MX record changes or gateway overhead.
• Behavioral AI autonomously detects and remediates advanced inbound email threats.
• Intelligent graymail filtering learns user preferences and reduces inbox noise at scale.

"Abnormal gives dunnhumby assurance that we are protecting our people at the front line from some of the most significant threats, like business email compromise."

Chief Security Officer

The Abnormal AI Solution

dunnhumby replaced its SEG with Abnormal's behavioral AI platform, integrated directly with Microsoft 365 without MX record changes. Abnormal established a per-identity behavioral model for every employee and vendor connected to dunnhumby, learning normal communication and relationship patterns to identify anomalies that legacy tools consistently missed. For dunnhumby, the Abnormal Behavior Platform autonomously detects and remediates advanced email threats and account takeovers, auto-triages user-reported suspicious messages, and automatically manages graymail through adaptive, personalized controls.

Why dunnhumby Chose Abnormal

dunnhumby ran a rigorous multi-vendor proof of value, leveraging Abnormal's API-native architecture to test its performance head-to-head against other API-based cloud email security solutions. This gave the team at dunnhumby a direct comparison of efficacy, including false positive and false negative rates. Abnormal outperformed all competitors, convincing dunnhumby to choose Abnormal for inbound protection. Since deployment, Abnormal continues to stop the advanced threats that previously reached user inboxes, giving the team full confidence that their workforce is protected. Employees across the organization have also shared positive feedback about Abnormal's graymail filtering, highlighting the steep reduction in spam. Additionally, for the operations team, repetitive tasks like blocking URLs, removing senders, and triaging the phishing mailbox are now largely automated by Abnormal, freeing analysts to focus on higher-priority work.

Protecting dunnhumby at the Front Line

dunnhumby operates at the intersection of consumer data and advanced AI, making it a high-value target as threat actors increasingly utilize AI for email attacks. With email as the company's primary external channel, the team relies on Abnormal to help protect employees at the front line without manual tuning. Looking ahead, dunnhumby is evaluating Abnormal's expanding roadmap, including outbound email security, to consolidate end-to-end protection on a single trusted platform.

"The feedback we got from the business was that they were noticing a significant, material reduction in the amount of spam they were getting, and they kind of liked that."

Chief Security Officer

Abnormal Products in Use:

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