Abnormal Security vs Splunk
Side-by-side comparison of AI visibility scores, market position, and capabilities
San Francisco AI email security (private, $5.1B valuation); $250M Series D (Wellington Management), behavioral AI detects novel BEC/phishing in Microsoft 365/Google Workspace competing with Proofpoint and Microsoft Defender.
About
Abnormal Security is a San Francisco, California-based AI-native cloud email security company — founded in 2018 by Evan Reiser (CEO) and Sanjay Jha (CTO), both former Google engineers — using behavioral AI to detect and block business email compromise (BEC), phishing, ransomware, account takeovers, and AI-generated social engineering attacks against enterprise email environments (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace) through approximately 600 employees. The company raised a $250 million Series D funding round at a $5.1 billion valuation, led by Wellington Management with participation from existing investors Greylock Partners, Menlo Ventures, Insight Partners, and the CrowdStrike Falcon Fund — bringing Abnormal's total funding to approximately $580 million. Abnormal Security's approach to email security is fundamentally different from traditional signature and rule-based approaches: rather than scanning emails for known malware hashes or suspicious links against threat databases, Abnormal's AI models each employee's historical communication behavior (who they email, how they write, what times they send messages, what financial requests they make) and flags deviations from established baselines as anomalies requiring investigation — enabling detection of novel BEC attacks that have no prior signature, AI-generated phishing that passes link reputation checks, and vendor invoice fraud that impersonates legitimate suppliers.
Data platform for security and observability acquired by Cisco for $28B in March 2024. Used by 90 of Fortune 100; 7,500+ enterprise customers globally; flagship SIEM and Splunk SOAR power enterprise security operations centers.
About
Splunk is a data platform for security and observability founded in 2003 in San Francisco, built on the idea that machine-generated data — logs, events, metrics, traces — contains the intelligence organizations need to detect threats, investigate incidents, and ensure digital systems stay available. The company's core technology indexes and searches massive volumes of machine data in real time, enabling security and IT operations teams to answer complex questions across their entire data estate without predefined schemas.\n\nSplunk's flagship product is its SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) platform, used by 90 of the Fortune 100 to detect and respond to security threats. Its broader portfolio includes Splunk Observability Cloud for infrastructure monitoring, Splunk SOAR for security orchestration and automated response, and Splunk IT Service Intelligence for IT operations. The platform's schema-on-read approach and SPL query language give analysts flexibility to investigate novel threats and operational issues that structured databases cannot accommodate.\n\nSplunk was acquired by Cisco for $28B in March 2024, one of the largest cybersecurity acquisitions in history, and has been integrated into Cisco's AI-driven security portfolio. The combination of Cisco's network telemetry and global customer relationships with Splunk's data analytics depth creates a powerful full-stack security and observability offering. Under Cisco, Splunk is adding AI-native features — including AI Assistant for SPL and automated threat detection — to maintain its leadership position as the SIEM market evolves toward AI-augmented security operations.
AI Visibility Head-to-Head
Key Details
Capabilities & Ecosystem
Capabilities
Integrations
Also Compare
Track AI Visibility in Real Time
Monitor how your brand performs across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Grok daily.