How FHAS Won Back 10 Hours a Week and Gained Full Visibility Into AI
1,000+
risky AI prompts surfaced and turned into coaching moments
70%
fewer phishing alerts reaching the IT team each day
5–10 hrs/wk
returned to a three-person IT team
“We were basically walking blind on AI. As soon as we turned on Adaptive's AI Governance we found major issues, and right away the product proved its worth.”
About FHAS
Federal Hearings and Appeals Services (FHAS) works at one of the most consequential points in American healthcare, the moment a coverage or payment decision is reviewed, appealed, or disputed. From its headquarters in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, FHAS serves health plans, federal and state government agencies, and government contractors nationwide with medical review, appeals management, independent dispute resolution, hearings and adjudication, and provider outreach and education.
Challenge
Needing eyes on AI before it got ahead
Stephen Conforti leads IT operations at FHAS with a team of two, a network administrator and a client systems administrator. They run the company's entire internal platform, from on-premises servers to its Azure environment. For a small team carrying a large load, visibility and time are the two most valuable resources.
In 2026, FHAS made a deliberate move to put AI in its employees' hands, rolling out Claude Enterprise as its approved AI platform and requiring online training before anyone received a license. The rollout was careful by design. What Conforti did not yet have was a way to see how employees were actually using it day to day, or whether sensitive information was ending up in tools the company had not approved.
“We have to maintain federal guidelines, stay fully HIPAA compliant, and meet state government requirements. Not having any visibility into what employees were doing with AI tools had been on my mind for a while, but it wasn't something I felt I had a solution for.”
The Turning Point
AI governance at the right time
FHAS was already using Adaptive for Security Awareness Training. So when Adaptive introduced AI Governance and Email Security, the question was not whether to trust a new vendor but whether to extend a relationship that was already working.
The timing made the decision easy. FHAS had launched Claude Enterprise about a month earlier, which meant AI Governance landed at the precise moment Conforti needed a clear view of the new tool and everything around it.
“We first brought Adaptive in for the phishing simulations, but as we used it, we grew to really like the platform itself, the ease of use and how quickly changes keep coming. AI Governance came in right on time, because we had just set up Claude Enterprise about a month before. It was pretty much right when we needed it.”
With an uptick in malicious attacks and increased review time for the team, Email Security was also an obvious pick for FHAS.
Solution
An all-in-one platform
Deployment was quick across the board. Working alongside Adaptive's customer success team, Conforti's group rolled out the AI Governance browser extension and device agent and connected Email Security to the company's mail environment in a matter of simple steps.
“It was very easy to implement. Between the customer success team and us, it was pretty much flip this toggle, do a couple of little steps, and it started working.”
AI governance
AI Governance gave FHAS a clear view and the controls to act on it. Adaptive shows Conforti which AI tools employees use, whether they are signed in with work or personal accounts, and when prompts contain sensitive information. It also gives FHAS the option to coach employees or block those tools outright.
“It gives us a chance to coach somebody who may not realize the kind of prompt they're putting in. We can say, we saw that you did this, but if you do it this way, it won't be a risky prompt. And we love that it's not just watching what's being done. It can actively block access too, so if guidance isn't enough, we can stop it.”
Adaptive also allows FHAS to see AI adoption. It shows AI use by tool, department, and employee, so Conforti can see who the company's heaviest and most effective AI users are and where adoption needs support.
“One of the major topics with our executive team is AI adoption, how well it's being driven and where we're seeing it. I use Adaptive's capabilities to build my slide deck for that conversation.”
Email security
Email Security shrank the alert queue that was eating the team's time. Before Adaptive, each reported email required a manual investigation and cleanup that could take 10 to 15 minutes. Adaptive's AI-driven Email Security now analyzes every message across more than 300 mailboxes and stops threats before they become tickets. Conforti values the ability to fine-tune how confidently Adaptive acts on its own, which lets him decide how much the platform remediates without anyone stepping in.
“We were genuinely surprised by how much it was able to catch. Where we were getting eight or nine phish alerts a day at a minimum, it's now dropped to two, maybe three a day at the most.”
Security awareness training
Security awareness training keeps employees sharp and does its own follow-through. FHAS has sent more than 1,500 phishing simulations through Adaptive, including custom-built scenarios, and uses Adaptive's automation to assign targeted training to employees right after a simulated click, so remediation happens without the IT team managing it by hand. And they have even more in their plans.
“Going forward, we're going to start using what Email Security catches to build our phishing simulations.”
Results
Full visibility into AI
In a business built on handling protected health information for government and health plan clients, AI Governance surfaced issues the moment it was switched on, and gave Conforti the means to resolve them before they could grow. 1,000+ risky prompts have since been surfaced and handled through coaching or policy, and the company has moved from no view of AI use at all to a complete picture of tools, accounts, and data exposure.
“It's one of those things where it's like, we can't be doing this. Your product has potentially saved us from major issues.”
AI adoption
Visibility has also made FHAS better at the positive side of AI. With adoption broken out by tool, department, and employee, Conforti brings concrete data to leadership about how the AI rollout is progressing, where it is taking hold, and which teams could use more support.
Handing time back to the team
Adaptive Email Security has analyzed tens of thousands of emails across hundreds of mailboxes, stopping hundreds of malicious, spam, and graymail messages, including credential phishing, off-channel phishing, scams, financial fraud attempts, malware, and calendar-invite phishing that had slipped past existing filters. Phishing alerts reaching the IT team have dropped by roughly 70%, from eight or nine a day to two or three.
For a three-person team, that change is significant. Fewer alerts and automatic remediation now return an estimated 5 to 10 hours every single week. Instead of tickets, the team now spends its time on meaningful project work.
“Just on the phish alerts alone, I'd say we're saving anywhere between 5 and 10 hours a week. It puts that time back in my team's pocket to do more important work.”
Consolidating onto one trusted platform
Adaptive's results have earned it a larger role at FHAS. Conforti sees the team using Adaptive for the foreseeable future.
“Adaptive is fast becoming one of the major trusted platforms for us. The AI Governance program has been fantastic, and Adaptive overall has become one of my go-to's for maintaining security within the company.”
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