IT Support for Accounting Firms in Chicago, IL
Chicago CPA firms and tax practices hold Social Security numbers, bank logins, payroll files and K-1s for every client on the books. NetSys runs the technology under that work remotely from Brooklyn: Microsoft 365 locked down with Conditional Access, monitored laptops, backups we restore on a schedule and the technical half of the written security plan the FTC and IRS expect.
The short answer
NetSys provides IT support and cybersecurity for accounting firms in Chicago, from three-person tax offices on the Northwest Side to audit and advisory practices in Loop towers. The service is remote and cloud-based only. From Brooklyn we answer your staff's calls, administer Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, watch every laptop through ThreatDown, filter mail with Barracuda, run Datto or Veeam backups and keep the records your written information security plan has to point to. We do not send engineers to Chicago; new laptops arrive enrolled in Intune and Windows Autopilot. We price each firm per user per month once we have assessed it, and nobody signs a long-term contract.
Work we have done for accounting firm clients
- Accounting firms
Corporate accounting firm
Migration of 2 TB of business data to Azure, secure remote access for 42 employees, and backup and recovery configuration.
Client names are withheld. These examples were chosen for the work involved, not for where the client is, so none is presented as a Chicago client.
What shapes IT for a Chicago accounting firm
Chicago is headquarters for several of the country's largest accounting firms, Grant Thornton, RSM US and BDO USA among them, and for the Illinois CPA Society, which dates to 1903. Most firms in the market are far smaller: two to twenty people in a Loop or West Loop suite, neighborhood tax offices that prepare returns for clients in more than one language, and suburban practices in Oak Brook, Schaumburg, Naperville and Northbrook. Those small firms recruit against the national names for the same staff, so hybrid schedules are normal, laptops leave the office every night, and partners review returns from home. Weather shapes the calendar too. Filing season runs through the coldest weeks of the year; O'Hare's thermometer read minus 23 on January 30, 2019, Chicago's coldest morning in 34 years and a day when few people should have been commuting. The tax software, the document portal and the e-signature tools have to work from a kitchen table as reliably as from a desk on Wacker Drive. We build for that: identity and devices that do not depend on the building, and files kept in a managed Microsoft 365 tenant rather than on a server under the reception desk.
How remote support works for a Chicago CPA firm
All of the work happens remotely from Brooklyn. NinjaOne patches workstations overnight, ThreatDown watches every laptop for ransomware behavior, and IT Glue stores your circuit details, software vendors and how-to notes for the office, so whichever engineer takes the call already knows how the firm is set up. Monitoring and emergency service run 24/7; the help desk is staffed seven days a week from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time, which is 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. in Chicago, so a reviewer finishing returns at 9 p.m. in March still reaches an engineer. NetSys does not send engineers on site in Illinois. A new staff accountant's laptop ships enrolled in Intune and Windows Autopilot and is ready at first sign-in; your office manager or the building's cabling contractor plugs in the firewall and scanners we configure before they leave our office. Critical issues get a ten-minute phone response and a remote session within thirty minutes.
E-file credentials, client portals and the inbox
The accounts that matter most at a tax practice are not always obvious. Each preparer's IRS e-Services login, the firm's e-file credentials, the tax software's cloud account and the client upload portal are all targets, because control of any one lets a criminal file returns or harvest documents. We put every staff sign-in behind Entra ID with Conditional Access and phishing-resistant multifactor methods, block sign-ins from countries where nobody works, and alert on new inbox forwarding rules, which are often the first sign a mailbox has been taken over. Bank and payroll portal passwords that staff share for client bill pay move into Keeper, with access granted per person and pulled the day someone leaves. Clients get a portal link instead of an email attachment for returns and organizers. Vendor problems come to us as well: we open the case, collect the logs and chase it, rather than leaving a partner on hold in October.
Wire fraud, ransomware and getting back to work
The most common incident at a small practice begins with a single convincing login page. Once a criminal has one staff mailbox, they can study how the firm writes to clients and then send a refund or payment request in the same style. Barracuda impersonation filtering, KnowBe4 training scheduled before January and a rule that every new bank detail is confirmed by phone, using a number already on file, cut that risk sharply. Recovery planning assumes the office may be unreachable: on July 15, 2024 the National Weather Service confirmed 32 tornadoes across northeast Illinois, a record for one event, with four inside city limits, in the middle of extension season. Immutable Datto SIRIS or Veeam copies live outside Illinois, the Microsoft 365 tenant has its own independent backup, and each quarter a handful of real client folders are restored to show the copies open. NetSys has worked more than 30 ransomware cases over three years with full recovery in every one, and clients that had a recovery plan on paper were back at their desks within a day.
Everything else about how we serve the area, including coverage, how support is delivered and the honest answer about where our office is, lives on our page for managed IT services in Chicago.
Rules that shape IT for Chicago accounting firms
FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314)
Because tax preparers and CPA firms are treated as financial institutions under Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the FTC's rule reaches them. The firm needs one person in charge of security (the Qualified Individual), a risk assessment in writing, a written program built on it, multifactor sign-in for customer data, encryption of that data whether stored or sent, and an annual written report to the partners. A breach exposing unencrypted data of at least 500 consumers has had to be reported to the FTC within 30 days of discovery since May 2024. Smaller firms, those with data on fewer than 5,000 consumers, are spared only some of these duties.
IRS Publications 4557 and 5708
Publication 4557 lists the safeguards the IRS expects from tax professionals, and Publication 5708, updated in August 2024, is a template for the written plan itself. The IRS describes the template as a starting point to be sized to the firm. Each PTIN renewal on Form W-12 also has the preparer acknowledge the written security plan requirement. We maintain the technical sections: the asset inventory, access controls, backup test results, encryption settings and the incident steps your staff follow.
Illinois Personal Information Protection Act (815 ILCS 530)
Section 45 requires a business that owns, licenses, maintains or stores records of Illinois residents' personal information to implement and maintain reasonable security measures, and to require the same by contract of anyone it shares that data with. A firm that complies with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley safeguards standards is treated as compliant with that section. If one breach requires notice to more than 500 Illinois residents, the Attorney General must be told as well, no later than the residents are. Personal information under the Act includes online account logins as well as Social Security and account numbers. This is general information, not legal advice.
The Illinois accountant's privilege (225 ILCS 450/27)
Illinois protects a CPA from being compelled to disclose in court information obtained in a confidential capacity as an accountant, and the Illinois CPA Society notes that the privilege belongs to the accountant rather than the client. It does not apply in Department of Financial and Professional Regulation investigations under the Act, and it does nothing once a mailbox or file share is breached. The confidentiality clients expect still depends on access controls, encryption and monitoring, which is the part we run.
This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm your obligations with counsel.
Accounting Firms in Chicago: FAQs
What does IT support cost for a CPA firm in Chicago?
There is no rate card: after looking at your firm we quote a monthly amount per user. What moves it for an accounting practice is where the tax application lives (a server in your office or the vendor's cloud), how much help you want maintaining the written security plan and the annual report to owners, how many client bank and payroll portals staff use, and whether an internal IT person stays involved. Migrations, a new firewall or a document management cleanup are quoted separately once we have scoped them. Nothing locks you into a long-term contract.
How does IT support work for Chicago accounting firms?
We run it from Brooklyn, about 710 miles away, entirely over remote sessions and cloud tools. Engineers fix problems over a remote session, push patches with NinjaOne and watch endpoints through ThreatDown. Monitoring and emergency service run 24/7; the help desk is staffed seven days a week from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time, an hour earlier by a Chicago clock. We do not send anyone on site. Laptops ship ready to use through Intune and Windows Autopilot, and network gear arrives configured for your own staff or cabling contractor to connect.
How do you help a Chicago firm meet the FTC Safeguards Rule?
We handle the technical controls and the records that prove them. Concretely: a second sign-in factor for every login that can reach client files, BitLocker on every laptop and encryption settings in Microsoft 365, ThreatDown alerts and logs, quarterly restore tests and an asset inventory in IT Glue. We help your Qualified Individual draft the risk assessment and supply the data for the annual written report: patch levels, sign-in exceptions, KnowBe4 training completion and any incidents. A firm partner remains the person accountable for the program; we make sure the IT parts of it are real.
Do you support our tax and practice-management software?
Yes, within clear limits. We do not replace your tax software, practice-management system or document management system, and we do not claim to configure their internals. We keep the workstations, servers, network, identity and backups those applications depend on in good shape, test annual releases before they reach every desk, and work the vendor's support line when something breaks on their side. If a hosted version would remove a server from your office, we plan the move and the data transfer with the vendor.
Can the firm keep filing if our Chicago office is closed?
That is the design goal. Staff sign in from any managed laptop with Conditional Access checking the device and the person, files live in SharePoint and OneDrive rather than a mapped drive, and the tax application runs either hosted or through a secured remote connection we set up. If ComEd loses power to the building or a storm closes the expressways, people work from home with the same tools. We test that path before January, so nobody discovers a gap on the first snow day of the season.
When is the best time for an accounting firm to switch IT providers?
Not between February and mid-April, and not in the first two weeks of October. Most firms do better starting in late spring or summer: discovery and documentation first, then security tools deployed in the background, then a planned weekend for the email and file cutover. Staff notice new sign-in prompts and a help desk number, and little else. If your current provider's contract ends in tax season, we can bring in monitoring and backups first and finish the rest after April 15.
Services behind this work
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