JB Poindexter & Co Takes a Future-Focused Road to Security and Efficiency

JB Poindexter & Co makes the vehicles that get work done. The Houston-based manufacturer's work truck bodies, step vans, and related equipment fill the fleets of critical infrastructure customers, including FedEx, UPS, and AT&T. JBPCO also produces truck accessories, funeral coaches, limousines, and packaging materials and provides precision machining services. As a 40+ year old company, JBPCO combines its proven past with forward-thinking strategies for technology, security, and efficiency.

JBPCO used native Microsoft 365 tools and ArmorBlox for email security. Still, socially engineered spear phishing, invoice fraud, and time-wasting graymail were huge issues. "My team handled up to 20,000 email threats a month," said John Barrow, CISO. "One full-time employee dealt only with email security, which affected our team's ability to innovate. We had user education, but human nature is to get distracted or forget."

After ArmorBlox was acquired, JBPCO looked for other AI alternatives. "A SEG isn't viable in today's world because it can't catch new email attack methods. The priority for me was finding a solution that could remediate all these email threats and accelerate time to value," he said.

“Sales folks often promise everything will work perfectly with no operational impact. It's usually not so. The Abnormal AI POV was the easiest technology implementation I've ever done. A quick call and it was fully deployed in our environment. I'd never seen anything like it.”
—John Barrow, CISO

The JBPCO team requested a proof of value from Abnormal AI and found the experience enlightening. The ease and speed of the API-based integration made a positive first impression. Then came the evidence of efficacy. "Abnormal showed us a lot of ugly stuff our previous solution had missed, like BEC attacks and QR code attacks targeting our CFO," Barrow said.

Abnormal's real-time attack visibility also proved valuable even before JBPCO became a customer. "Just before we met with our CFO for approval to invest in Abnormal, he was targeted with a sophisticated threat. I was able to show him the attack in the Abnormal dashboard, and he immediately agreed that we needed this solution,” Barrow said.

JBPCO chose Abnormal for its quick time-to-value and efficacy. The SOC team now saves more than 200 hours per month on email remediation. “We’ve freed that one full-time employee from email duty so he can focus on innovating,” Barrow said. He worries less about employees and VIPs falling prey to targeted social engineering attacks. “Abnormal fixes the human behavior issue with malicious messages like fraudulent invoice attacks, because our users don’t see those emails."

In addition, Abnormal's Email Productivity module saved 547 hours in 30 days by filtering more than 300,000 graymail messages. Abnormal’s AI model has helped JBPCO get more comfortable with leveraging AI for other use cases, Barrow said. JBPCO has also been able to help its customers and vendors with security issues, using findings from Abnormal.

“Abnormal shows the value of velocity through their speed to ROI, which was important to our leadership. We implemented it quickly, received protection immediately, and continue to receive value in terms of productivity and innovation. Our investment in Abnormal was a smart decision.”
—John Barrow, CISO

JBPCO now has a reliable, future-focused partner for security and productivity. “Abnormal is constantly improving and maturing the product. They're super responsive and always showing me new things, so it's a true partnership,” Barrow said.

That gives him peace of mind as he monitors the rapid evolution of attack strategies. “I'm confident that Abnormal will keep up with emerging threats leveraging AI, because AI was Abnormal's focus from the beginning. They were ahead of the curve, and everyone else is just trying to keep up.”