How Dental Depot Strengthened Phishing Defense with Adaptive Security's Phish Triage

Introduction

With both clinical and administrative staff relying heavily on email and digital systems, Dental Depot's IT team plays a critical role in maintaining day-to-day operations while protecting the organization from security threats. Adaptive Security's Phish Triage transformed their phishing response from passive email collection to an active, AI-powered workflow—cutting review time from 10–15 minutes per email to under a minute.

Customer Background

Dental Depot operates 40+ dental locations across Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Missouri, providing preventive, restorative, cosmetic, orthodontic, and emergency dental care through a network of clinics focused on accessible, patient-centered treatment.

The Security Challenge Before Adaptive

Prior to Adaptive, Dental Depot used a legacy email security tool to collect employee-reported emails. However, the IT team lacked the staffing and workflow needed to consistently review each submission.

"We didn't have the manpower beforehand. I wasn't going through and reviewing every reported email."

Reviewing each reported email manually would take 10–15 minutes per message, making consistent triage unrealistic alongside the team's other responsibilities. As a result, many reports went unreviewed, employees received little feedback, and the value of reporting wasn't fully realized.

"Emails were getting reported, but we didn't have the capacity to actually do anything with them."

Why Dental Depot Chose Adaptive Phish Triage

Adaptive's Phish Triage stood out because it addressed that exact gap: enabling the team to act on employee reports without adding operational burden. The decision was driven by several factors, including AI-driven email classification with adjustable confidence thresholds, a seamless Microsoft Teams integration, and built-in enrichment through VirusTotal. Together, these features allowed the IT team to stay in control while dramatically reducing the time required to evaluate each report.

"Phish Triage makes it really easy to jump in there and review emails…especially with the AI. It makes our jobs way easier."

How Phish Triage Works Today at Dental Depot

Today, phishing reports are an active part of Dental Depot's security workflow. When an employee reports a suspicious email, Adaptive Phish Triage automatically analyzes and classifies it, surfacing high-confidence items for review. Gus' team can quickly validate the threat and take appropriate action—typically in under a minute.

"If this was manual, it would take 10–15 minutes. Now it's under a minute."

Because Phish Triage integrates directly with Microsoft Teams, notifications and investigation fit naturally into the team's existing workflow.

Impact of Automation & Results

Adaptive's automation changed how Dental Depot handles phishing reports in practice. Instead of collecting reports without follow-up, every reported email is now reviewed. AI-driven classification and threat enrichment allow the IT team to quickly understand what they're seeing and respond with confidence.

"Since we never manually did it on [our prior tool], we pretty much just ignored them. Now we're actually engaged and looking at what's reported."

That shift from passive intake to active response means every reported email is now investigated, allowing the team to identify real threats faster and address them before they escalate.

Employee Experience & Culture Shift

Beyond efficiency gains, Adaptive has contributed to a noticeable change in employee behavior and security culture at Dental Depot. Employees are more comfortable reporting suspicious emails because they know their submissions are reviewed and taken seriously.

Gus reinforces this during onboarding and in day-to-day interactions, encouraging employees to use the phishing report button rather than forwarding emails or sending screenshots. The team has also introduced a phishing reporting leaderboard to further encourage participation.

"I've had a lot of people text or email me. I push them to use the report button."

The result is a more security-aware environment where employees play an active role in defense and the IT team can respond quickly without added friction.

Why Adaptive Stands Out

For Dental Depot, Adaptive strikes the right balance between automation and control. The AI accelerates triage and highlights real threats, while the IT team retains oversight through configurable thresholds and review workflows.

By integrating directly into existing tools like Microsoft Teams and providing immediate context through enrichment, Adaptive simplifies phishing response instead of adding another system to manage. It enables a phishing response process for Dental Depot that the team can realistically sustain—one that employees use, and one the IT team can actually keep up with.