Village Roadshow entertains Australia and the Asia-Pacific region through movie distribution, cinemas, and theme parks. With 70+ years in business, a network of major media and technology partners, and up to 8M annual theme park and cinema visitors, Village Roadshow is a widely trusted brand. “Protecting data, maintaining trust, and ensuring operational resilience are fundamental to our success,” said Keyur Lavingia, Head of Security. “Email security is a major focus as the most common attack entry point.”

Operating in a complex, high-profile ecosystem means facing constantly evolving threats, especially credential phishing and social engineering. Village Roadshow previously used a secure email gateway (SEG) alongside Microsoft 365, but it didn't meet expectations. “The SEG model was increasingly misaligned with the modern threat landscape,” Lavingia said. “Lots of graymail and a steady stream of sophisticated phishing attempts were slipping through. Tuning policies, reviewing quarantined messages, and responding to false positives took up time that was needed elsewhere, and it was a nightmare to work out which console to use for each task. ”At the same time, users frequently complained about lost messages.

“Abnormal's AI Phishing Coach is giving us great value. It saves us so much time by selecting, scheduling, and sending campaigns. And because the AI coach automatically handles training feedback and follow up, we have more time to focus on other security projects.”
—Keyur Lavingia, Head of Security

Village Roadshow wanted to modernise its email security with a platform that blocked threats intelligently, reduced operational overhead, and supported a cloud-native, API-first approach. Abnormal’s behavioural AI, seamless Microsoft 365 integration, and focus on identifying the known good rather than known bad actors intrigued Lavingia and his team.

“The proof of value setup was ten minutes—mind-blowingly simple compared to what we were used to,” Lavingia said. “We ran the POV for 4-6 weeks and it caught CEO and CISO impersonation and invoice fraud attacks that made us literally open our eyes and say, 'What is going on with the SEG?' When you start seeing these results, things get real.”

Lavingia's team also appreciated Abnormal's intuitive dashboard and autoremediation capabilities. "We did not have enough faith in the SEG's autoremediation to turn it on," Lavingia said. "With Abnormal we did it on day one so if there were issues, we could turn it off, but we never had to." The SOC team now spends more time on threat hunting and security posture enhancements.

Abnormal's graymail management improves user experience by decluttering inboxes, while AI Phishing Coach automates user education. "It transforms end users from potential liabilities into active participants in our security strategy," he added. Overall, Abnormal has improved operational and cost efficiency. "People don't complain about emails, the solution works in the background, and the Abnormal team is proactive in ensuring we get maximum value from the platform," he said.

“Abnormal's SEG Displacement Program provided us with instructions and guidance from a professional services engineer. Once we moved across, we realised we had not had a single incident or complaint from a user during the process. Replacing our SEG with Abnormal was that seamless for us.”
—Keyur Lavingia Head of Security

With Abnormal, Village Roadshow can better protect its trusted brand. “Abnormal has stopped executive phishing campaigns and vendor compromise attempts that could have led to significant damage,” Lavingia said. Behavioural AI also prepares Village Roadshow for the future. “Attackers already use generative AI to craft more convincing lures and automate campaigns at scale. Having a solution powered by AI is now essential, and we are confident that Abnormal will evolve alongside these threats and help us secure future use cases," he said.