Certified CIO Reduces Escalations with Phinbox IQ

Certified CIO had been using Phin’s security awareness training when they became beta testers of a new email triaging feature. Almost immediately, Phin’s automated triaging capabilities unlocked measurable improvements in both incident management and team efficiency for Certified CIO.

L1s with little experience in triaging no longer need to frequently escalate emails. They can now investigate, triage, and act on reported incidents directly inside ConnectWise Manage, and a once complex process now takes almost no time at all.

Why Certified CIO chose Phin Security

“We were doing everything by hand... Now, we’ve dropped engineering time by 80 percent.”
— Joel Chambers

When Joel set out to replace Certified’s previous SAT platform, his approach emphasized hands-on testing of automation and other features to gauge measurable business impact. The team loved how Phin’s simplicity immediately helped engineers shift their workloads to spend more time on high-value tasks.

After a smooth transition from the old platform, Joel was continuously looking for ways to streamline and automate security workflows. After discussions with the Phin team, Certified was asked to become a beta tester of the new triaging pod. Suddenly, thanks to the ConnectWise Manage integration, engineers could review and analyze email threats and block malicious emails inside a dedicated interface. Escalation rate and response times both immediately began to drop.

Size

• ​58 Clients

Active users

• ​710+

Escalation Specialist

• ​Joel Chambers

Partner Since

• ​2022

Evaluated Partners

• ​KnowBe4 +more

Challenges

• ​Every reported phishing incident had to be manually scripted.
• ​L1s lacked experience or knowledge to accurately triage many emails on their own, leaving room for error and causing delays and workflow bottlenecks.
• ​Emails were frequently escalated to a higher level tech for confirmation or further analysis, consuming valuable engineer time.

Phin's Solution

"My L1s can handle stuff that used to get escalated to me. This lets me focus on other things."
— Joel Chambers

Phinbox IQ centralizes and automates the investigation process. Engineers can research, triage, and remediate reported emails within ConnectWise Manage. The intuitive interface offers actionable technical insights that reduce errors and empower even junior staff to triage emails without escalating to senior techs.

The embedded Phin Pod inside ConnectWise Manage brings AI severity, URL analysis, header checks, and one‑click remediation to technicians without switching tools. Automated data presentation in one place significantly lowers the risk of human error during analysis and response for all staff, and domains and emails can be blocked across all clients with just a few clicks.

Results

"You've reduced the human error rate... not just on the end user side, but also on the engineer side."

— Joel Chambers

• ​38 hrs: Monthly time savings. Their engineers triage 150 emails/month, and the time spent per email dropped from 15 minutes to 3 minutes.
• ​L1: Escalations reduced as nearly all incidents are now resolved by L1 techs.
• ​<1 min: The average response time for reported email threats is now less than one minute.

"Phin gave us initial flexibility, and since then, keeps adding and adding features while others really don't."

— Joel Chambers, Escalation Specialist, Certified CIO

Features, Updates or Changes Certified CIO Wants to See

Joel Chambers would like to see broader support for ConnectWise Manage clients, continued integration of contextual threat intelligence and remediation options, and better self-service investigation modules for junior staff.