Cyber Insurance for Dental Practices: The Controls Underwriters Are Asking About in 2026
What dental cyber insurance actually covers in 2026, the underwriting questionnaire controls carriers review.
Read articleCompliance
Best MDR providers for dental practices compared (2026)
Six MDR options for a dental practice, compared on what each vendor publishes: HIPAA fit, identity coverage, price, term, seat minimum, who responds.
SMB
Obsidian Ridge's Ridge Core includes endpoint MDR and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace ITDR at $25 per person per month, month-to-month with no minimum and business onboarding separate. Huntress's SOC monitors and acts 24/7; Obsidian Ridge provides CISSP-led follow-through within one business day, serving the Research Triangle and businesses across the United States.
A dental practice buying MDR is doing something unusual: shopping a product category built and priced for organisations ten to a hundred times its size. Three of the six options below publish no price at all, and the one that publishes the cleanest numbers — Huntress — sets a floor of fifty seats if you buy it directly, which is ten times a typical practice.
Disclosure: Obsidian Ridge is the last row of this table. It resells Huntress, which is also a row here, and nothing else in the table. Every other cell comes from that vendor's own website, fetched 29 and 30 September 2026 and cited at the end. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the cell says "Not published" rather than a guess, and no per-endpoint figure has been borrowed from a comparison site.
The two questions that actually decide it for a dental practice
Do you run Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace? This is the question most MDR comparisons skip and the one that eliminates options fastest. Identity is where practice breaches start — a hijacked mailbox, a filter quietly deleting invoice emails, a payroll redirect — and identity coverage is not uniform. Huntress states on its own Managed ITDR page that the product protects both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace with the same SOC. Sophos leads with Microsoft depth on its MDR page. Blackpoint and Sophos document Google Workspace integrations on separate pages rather than on the MDR page itself, and Arctic Wolf and Defendify do not state Google Workspace coverage on their MDR pages. Ask each one directly, and ask whether containment on Google is automatic or manual.
How many computers do you actually have? Not seats, not staff — endpoints with an agent on them. A four-chair practice with six workstations and a practice-management server has seven. At seven, a fifty-seat minimum is not a discount question, it is a disqualification.
Antivirus vs EDR vs MDR for cyber insurance
Use the carrier's wording and the actual deployment. These are buying distinctions, not a universal statement that one label guarantees insurance acceptance.
| Approach | What to establish | Who acts | Evidence to request |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antivirus | Prevention/detection features and coverage on the required devices | Your IT team or a separately contracted service | Device inventory and policy/deployment records |
| EDR | Endpoint telemetry, investigation and supported response actions in the purchased product | Your team unless management is included | Coverage, alert records and response permissions |
| MDR | Detection technology plus an operated response service with stated hours and scope | The contracted monitoring/response provider, with a defined business handoff | Device coverage, responder responsibilities and incident records |
Ask which unsupported devices or clinical systems need another arrangement. For the broader purchase, use the dental renewal checklist, practice cost guide and free application help. A provider explains its controls; the carrier decides whether they meet the requirement.
The comparison
| Provider | HIPAA Security Rule fit (as published) | Cyber-insurance evidence | Microsoft 365 / Google identity | Pricing model | Contract term | Minimum seats | Who does the response |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Huntress (direct) | Published: a healthcare compliance guide offering "compliance-ready reporting designed for healthcare organizations" | Not published | Both. Managed ITDR covers Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace with the same 24/7 SOC | Published: $7.99 per endpoint/mo and $3.60 per identity/mo at 100 units; $8.99 and $4.80 at 50. Rate falls as volume rises; nothing published below 50 | Published: 12 months standard | 50 per product on direct and reseller purchases; none through an MSP | Huntress 24/7 SOC investigates and stages remediation; you own deployment, portal monitoring and acting on incident reports |
| Blackpoint Cyber | Not published | Not published | Not on the MDR page. A separate Google Workspace integration page states its SOC "detects and contains Google Workspace threats" | Quote-only. States per-seat monthly subscription, "no setup fees and no long-term lock-in contracts" — no figure | Not published (states no long-term lock-in) | Not published | 24/7 human-led SOC. Note: the product page is titled "MDR for MSPs" and says it is built specifically for MSPs, so a practice buys it through one |
| Sophos MDR | Published: a HIPAA solution page, and a healthcare page offering "audit-ready reports for standards such as FFIEC, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and SOC2" | Not published | Microsoft 365 — states the "deepest Microsoft coverage on the market". Google Workspace not stated on the MDR page; Sophos announced a Google Workspace integration for Sophos MDR separately | Not published on its own MDR page | Not published | Not published | Sophos analysts; states "Threats are fully removed, not just contained. No hourly caps." |
| Arctic Wolf | Published: compliance page states "Simplify HIPAA compliance with customized reporting" | Not published as a deliverable. Its MDR page describes a Security Operations Warranty of up to $3 million in financial assistance; no evidence pack is promised | Not published on the MDR page | Not published | Not published | Not published | "Arctic Wolf Security Teams" with a "Concierge Experience", alongside its Aurora Agentic SOC |
| Defendify | No HIPAA product page found (/solutions/compliance/ returned 404 on 29 September 2026) | Not published | Not published | Published starting prices: Detection & Response from $325/mo; All-In-One from $925/mo; final price set by modules and assets | Not published | Not published | Defendify 24/7/365 monitoring; "rapid response" listed under support |
| Obsidian Ridge | Maps to HIPAA Security Rule safeguards; the evidence is packaged, not just claimed | Readiness Sprint evidence pack, $1,500–$3,500, delivered in 7 business days | Both, via Huntress Managed ITDR in Ridge Core, with a real caveat, below | Published: $25 per person/mo (Ridge Core, MDR + ITDR), $50 per person/mo (Ridge Plus, adds training, email protection and a secure browser for work apps) | Published: Ridge Core month-to-month; Ridge Plus annual term billed monthly | None on Ridge Core | Huntress 24/7 SOC triages and can isolate a host; a CISSP reviews every escalation within one business day, coordinates the rest and explains it to the owner |
The caveat in our own row, stated before you find it
Huntress' identity feature set is not identical across the two platforms, and the gap matters for a practice on Google. Identity Isolation, Rogue Apps / OAuth consent review, adversary-in-the-middle detection and the exfiltration timeline are Microsoft 365 only. On Google Workspace, monitoring and detection work, but account containment is performed manually — by us, within one business day, not automatically at 3am.
So if you are on Google Workspace and someone's mailbox is taken over at two in the morning, Huntress detects it and cuts the session, and the human steps sit inside a business day. If you are on Microsoft 365, more of that is automatic. No vendor comparison table we could find says this out loud, and it is the single most useful thing in this article for a Google-based practice.
What "who does the response" is really asking
Read the last column again, because it is the one that separates products from services.
Huntress buying direct: the SOC investigates and stages a remediation, and the incident report lands in someone's inbox at the practice. That someone has to read it, decide, and act. Huntress says so plainly on its own pricing page — the price "does not include deployment, integration, or the day-to-day operational and portal management that Huntress Partners can provide." If the practice manager is the person who reads it, direct purchase is a poor fit no matter what it costs.
Sophos and Arctic Wolf both put their own staffed teams behind the alert, which is a genuinely stronger position than Huntress direct, and neither publishes what it costs, so you cannot compare it to anything until you are in a sales process.
Blackpoint is built for MSPs by its own description, so the practical question is not what Blackpoint does but which MSP you would be hiring around it.
When you don't need MDR yet
Two honest cases, and both are common in dentistry.
The free controls aren't on yet. If staff share one login for the practice-management system, if multi-factor authentication is "allowed" rather than enforced on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, if the only administrator account is also someone's daily email, or if nobody has restored from a backup to check it works — fix those first. They cost nothing but time, and they block more real attacks than monitoring does. MDR layered on a practice where everyone shares a password buys you a faster notification of a breach you were always going to have. (Backup is not something we sell; get it from whoever runs your IT, and test it.)
You are a solo practice already paying for tooling you have not turned on. Two or three computers, no on-premise server, everything in Microsoft 365 with a Business Premium licence that already includes Defender for Business. Turn on what you own, enforce MFA, separate the admin account, and reassess. At three endpoints the honest recommendation is to spend the money on a HIPAA risk analysis instead — the thing OCR actually asks for first, and the thing no MDR product produces.
Both of those are reasons to wait. A provider who will not name a case where you should wait is selling.
Six questions for whichever vendor you call
- At my exact endpoint count, what is the monthly figure — not the per-unit rate?
- What is the minimum, and what is the term?
- Do you monitor Google Workspace identities, and is containment there automatic or manual?
- When an alert fires at 3am, who acts — a person, a rule, or my practice manager?
- When my carrier sends a renewal questionnaire, what exactly do you hand me?
- What is explicitly out of scope?
Question one catches the seat minimum. Question three catches the Microsoft assumption. Question six catches everything else.
Sources
Every competitor fact above was taken from the page listed here, fetched 29 or 30 September 2026. No aggregator, directory or third-party ranking was used, and no per-endpoint price was carried over from a comparison site.
- Huntress — $7.99/endpoint and $3.60/identity at 100 units (product cards, above the note "Pricing shown is at 100 units. Your per-unit rate goes down as volume goes up"), $8.99/endpoint and $4.80/identity at 50 on the in-house-teams calculator; the 50-seat minimum per product on direct and reseller purchases; no Huntress-required minimum through an MSP; the 12-month standard term for MSPs, direct customers and resellers; and the note that the price excludes deployment, integration and portal management: huntress.com/pricing. Managed ITDR covering both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace with the same SOC: Managed ITDR. Identity Isolation supporting Microsoft 365 only, with access revoked (not suspended) on Google Workspace: Huntress Identity Isolation for ITDR for Google Workspace. Healthcare compliance reporting: HIPAA Compliance in Cybersecurity.
- Blackpoint Cyber — MSP positioning, the 24/7 human-led SOC, and the per-seat subscription with no setup fees and no long-term lock-in: Managed Detection & Response for MSPs. Google Workspace detection and containment: Google Workspace integration.
- Sophos — "Threats are fully removed, not just contained. No hourly caps.", and the Microsoft depth claim: Sophos MDR. Google Workspace integration: Sophos MDR and Sophos XDR now integrate with Google Workspace. HIPAA: HIPAA Security. Audit-ready reporting for HIPAA among other standards: Healthcare.
- Arctic Wolf — Arctic Wolf Security Teams, the Concierge Experience, the Aurora Agentic SOC, the Security Operations Warranty of up to $3 million, and the absence of any published price or minimum: Managed Detection and Response. HIPAA reporting: Industry Compliance.
- Defendify — MDR with 24/7/365 monitoring: defendify.com. Package starting prices (Detection & Response from $325 a month, All-In-One from $925 a month, customised by modules and assets): Pricing. Checked for a compliance product page on 29 September 2026;
https://www.defendify.com/solutions/compliance/returned 404. - Obsidian Ridge — tiers and terms: /pricing. Readiness Sprint scope and fee: /cyber-insurance-readiness. Identity coverage and the Microsoft-versus-Google containment difference: /services/managed-itdr. Dental programme: /industries/dental.
Last updated
October 2, 2026. We refresh this content as the threat landscape and tools evolve.
FAQ
Questions readers usually ask next
What MDR do dental practices use?
There is no published market share for MDR in dentistry, so treat any ranked list — including this one — as a comparison of what each vendor publishes rather than a survey of what practices run.
The products a dental practice can realistically buy in 2026 are Huntress (direct, or through an MSP partner), Blackpoint Cyber (positioned and sold for MSPs, so through a partner), Sophos MDR, Arctic Wolf, Defendify, and managed offerings built on those platforms.
Of those, Huntress publishes a per-unit price and Defendify publishes package starting prices; the rest are quote-only.
On identity, Huntress states on its Managed ITDR page that one SOC covers both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and Blackpoint and Sophos document Google Workspace integrations on separate pages.
That matters, because many dental practices run Google, not Microsoft.
Does a dental office need MDR for cyber insurance?
Carriers increasingly ask about endpoint detection and response and about who responds to an alert, and some decline or surcharge without it — but no carrier publishes a universal requirement, and the wording differs between applications.
Read your own renewal questionnaire before buying anything: the question is usually whether you have EDR or MDR deployed on all endpoints and whether a third party monitors it around the clock.
Answering yes truthfully requires both the tool and the monitoring, which is the difference between antivirus and MDR.
What we can tell you without seeing your form is that an application-control or antivirus answer does not always satisfy a detection-and-response question.
How much does MDR cost for a dental practice?
Three of the six options here publish a figure.
Huntress publishes $7.99 per endpoint per month at 100 endpoints, and $8.99 per endpoint at 50 on its own in-house-team calculator; it states the per-unit rate goes down as volume goes up, and publishes no rate below 50.
Direct and reseller purchases carry a 50-seat minimum per product and a 12-month standard term, so a 12-computer practice pays the fifty-seat floor of $449.50 a month no matter that it deploys twelve.
There is no published twelve-endpoint rate to compare against, which is itself the answer.
Obsidian Ridge publishes $25 per person per month for Ridge Core, month-to-month with no minimum, covering MDR plus email and cloud account monitoring (ITDR). A shared computer with no named user counts as one person.
For a home or a very small office that only needs the computers watched, Ridge Watch is $15 per computer per month.
Defendify publishes package starting prices: Detection & Response from $325 a month and its All-In-One package from $925 a month, with the final figure set by the modules and assets you choose.
Blackpoint Cyber, Sophos MDR and Arctic Wolf publish no figure at all; any per-endpoint number you find for them on a comparison site is unverified until you hold a written quote.
Can a 5-person dental office buy Huntress?
Not directly at that size, in practical terms.
Huntress requires a 50-seat minimum per product on direct and reseller purchases, so a five-person practice buying direct would pay for fifty endpoints of Managed EDR and fifty identities of Managed ITDR.
Huntress states that purchasing through an MSP carries no Huntress-required minimum seat counts, which is the route that makes small practices viable.
Obsidian Ridge is a Huntress MSP partner and prices Ridge Core per person with no minimum, so a five-person practice pays for five people.
Is antivirus the same as EDR or MDR on a dental insurance application?
No. Antivirus focuses on preventing or detecting malicious software; EDR adds endpoint telemetry and investigation/response capabilities; MDR supplies people operating detection and response within an agreed scope.
Product features overlap, so use the carrier's exact wording, covered device inventory and named responder rather than assuming a label is enough.
Related reading
Keep going
Multi-Location Dental & DSO Cybersecurity: The Consolidation Problem
Why DSO and multi-location dental groups inherit the worst cybersecurity posture of their weakest practice.
Read articleSecurity awareness training providers for companies under 100 employees compared (2026)
Six awareness-training options under 100 seats, compared on what each publishes: simulation, managed or self-serve, reporting, price, term, seat minimum.
Read article