Email as the Front Door: Addressing a Persistent Higher Education Security Challenge

Higher education continues to face relentless phishing, account compromise, and other socially engineered attacks through one of the most effective and accessible threat vectors: email. Many security teams still spend substantial time investigating suspicious messages, responding to user reports, and managing the downstream effects of email-based threats. That constant operational pressure can keep teams reactive and pull attention away from broader security priorities. This session examines how the security analyst team at University of Notre Dame approached ongoing challenges and turned those pressures into an opportunity to strengthen and mature email security in ways that reduce operational burden, strengthen protection, and better align security services with institutional risk. In this session, we will discuss the pain points and threat patterns that make email such a persistent operational challenge, how we approached the need for stronger and more adaptive protections, and how that work has helped create more capacity for higher-value security efforts.

Ian Washburn from the University of Notre Dame and Zach Oxman from Abnormal.ai will explore how modern email security capabilities—including AI-driven detection and richer threat intelligence—can support a broader security vision beyond the inbox. As part of an evolving Zero Trust strategy, we are looking at how email signals may eventually complement identity, endpoint, and other sources of intelligence to inform more coordinated and automated responses over time. Attendees will leave with practical ideas for addressing today’s email threats while laying the groundwork for a more adaptive, intelligence-informed email security program.