IT Support for Accounting Firms in Houston, TX
Houston CPA firms hold Social Security numbers, bank credentials and partnership K-1s for energy executives, royalty owners and family businesses. From Brooklyn, NetSys supports those firms remotely with encrypted and monitored computers, Microsoft 365 locked down by Conditional Access, backups we restore-test, and the written security plan that the FTC and the IRS expect every tax preparer to keep.
The short answer
NetSys is a remote IT support and cybersecurity provider for Houston accounting and CPA firms, from two-partner tax practices in Sugar Land to audit and advisory firms downtown. Engineers staff the help desk, Intune manages every laptop, ThreatDown provides managed detection and response, Barracuda filters email, and Datto or Veeam backups are restore-tested, with the records that back up your written security plan kept current. Nobody from NetSys travels to your office; new laptops arrive ready through Windows Autopilot. Fees are set per user per month after we assess the firm, and the agreement runs month to month.
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 Houston client.
What changes for an accounting firm in Houston
TXCPA Houston, with nearly 8,000 members, is the largest chapter of the Texas Society of CPAs, and its members practice in a market shaped by energy. A Houston firm may prepare returns for royalty owners who receive a stack of 1099s from several operators, keep the books for oilfield service companies, run joint-interest billing for small producers or issue K-1s for energy partnerships. Those documents arrive from operators, banks and clients through portals, email and the occasional thumb drive, which makes the client portal and the mailbox the two places attackers aim. The calendar bends around the Gulf as well. After Hurricane Beryl, the IRS postponed federal filing and payment deadlines falling between July 5, 2024 and February 3, 2025 for 67 Texas counties, Harris among them, so many firms carried extension work into the winter while clients recovered from days without power. The lesson for IT is plain: workpapers, tax software and the portal must run from a laptop at home on a cellular connection, with nothing important living only on a server in the office.
How remote IT support works for a Houston CPA firm
Every workstation reports to NinjaOne, which installs Windows and application patches after hours, and to ThreatDown, which flags suspicious behavior to an engineer. IT Glue holds the firm's runbook, so whoever picks up a ticket on a Tuesday night in April sees the same scanner settings, portal quirks and vendor phone numbers as the engineer who set them up. Engineers staff the desk from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. Central all week: an associate opening the office at 6 in March is covered, and so is a partner finishing extensions at 9 at night. Outside those hours, monitoring and emergency service take over. NetSys does not send engineers to Houston offices. Laptops for new staff ship enrolled through Windows Autopilot, and the office manager or a local cabling contractor connects scanners, printers and the pre-configured firewall. For a critical issue, expect a call back within ten minutes and an engineer connected within half an hour.
Operator statements, tax software and the client portal
Energy work adds systems a general tax practice never sees: operator portals where royalty and working-interest statements are downloaded, revenue and joint-interest accounting software, and spreadsheets of division orders that someone keeps updating by hand. They sit beside the professional tax package, the practice-management system and the portal clients use to upload organizers. Our job is the layer underneath. Every login goes through Entra ID with Conditional Access and phishing-resistant multifactor authentication, and the operator and bank portal credentials staff share move into Keeper, so each person's access is recorded and can be cut off the day they leave. We schedule tax software updates for a quiet evening in early January and test them on one machine first. If an application itself breaks, we take the problem to its vendor with logs and screenshots and keep the ticket moving until it closes.
Phishing, wire fraud and the next storm
Accounting firms rarely lose data to an exotic exploit. The usual sequence is a convincing login page, a hijacked mailbox and, weeks later, a client wiring a balance due to an account the attacker controls; in tax season the bait is often a fake IRS e-Services or software renewal notice. Barracuda screens inbound mail for impersonation, Microsoft 365 alerts us when anyone creates a forwarding rule, KnowBe4 runs simulated phishing in January before the rush, and the firm adopts one rule: payment instructions change only after a phone call to a known number. For storms, plan on the building being dark for a week, as offices without power were after Beryl. Immutable Datto SIRIS or Veeam copies sit outside the Gulf Coast, Microsoft 365 has its own backup, and each quarter we restore a sample client folder end to end. NetSys has handled more than 30 ransomware incidents in three years, with full recovery every time.
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 location page for Houston, TX.
Rules that shape IT for Houston accounting firms
FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314)
Under Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the FTC treats tax preparation firms as financial institutions, so 16 CFR Part 314 applies. The rule calls for a written information security program run by a designated Qualified Individual, a risk assessment in writing, multifactor authentication, encryption of customer information, staff training and regular reporting to the firm's owners. An amendment in force since May 2024 adds a federal notice: if unencrypted information about 500 or more consumers is acquired without authorization, the firm must tell the FTC within 30 days of discovering it.
IRS Publications 4557 and 5708
IRS Publication 4557 is the agency's safeguards guide for tax professionals, and Publication 5708 gives small practices a model written information security plan to adapt. The PTIN renewal process reminds preparers that the plan is required. We maintain the parts of the plan that depend on IT: the device and system inventory, who can access what, backup and restore evidence, and the steps to follow after an incident.
Texas State Board of Public Accountancy Rule 501.75
The Board's confidentiality rule requires anyone in the client practice of public accountancy to take all reasonable measures to keep client records confidential and to notify the affected client in writing immediately after learning of a loss of, or loss of control over, those records. The rule states that loss includes a cybersecurity breach, and it expects firms to keep a backup system so they can identify which clients to notify.
Texas breach notice (Business and Commerce Code 521.053)
A breach of sensitive personal information requires notice to affected individuals within 60 days of determining it occurred and, when 250 or more Texans are affected, a report to the Attorney General within 30 days through the office's online form. The Board's immediate client-notice duty runs alongside those deadlines rather than replacing them. This is general information, not legal advice.
This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm your obligations with counsel.
Accounting Firms in Houston: FAQs
What does IT support cost for a CPA firm in Houston?
There is no rate card. After an assessment we quote a fee per user per month, and for a CPA firm it depends mostly on five things: the servers or hosted tax applications in use, our role in maintaining the written security plan and its yearly report, the number of operator, bank and payroll portals staff log into for clients, how many seasonal preparers join each January, and whether an in-house IT person keeps some of the work. One-off work, such as moving to a new Microsoft 365 tenant, is scoped and priced on its own. Either side can end the agreement at the end of any month.
How does IT support work for Houston accounting firms?
Support is remote. A preparer calls, emails or opens a ticket, and an engineer in Brooklyn takes control of the machine with permission, fixes the issue and logs the change. Engineers staff the line from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. Central on every day of the week; overnight, monitoring and emergency service keep watch. Since nobody from NetSys travels to Houston, replacement hardware arrives ready to sign in through Windows Autopilot, and anything that needs hands is done by your staff or a local contractor. Ransomware, or email failing in extension week, goes directly to your dedicated engineer, and your account manager answers on a real cell number.
How do you help a Houston firm meet the FTC Safeguards Rule?
The work begins with a written risk assessment of your firm: where client data lives, who can reach it and what could go wrong. Each requirement in 16 CFR 314.4 is then tied to something we can show an examiner or insurer, such as Conditional Access sign-in policies, BitLocker and Microsoft 365 encryption reports, audit logs, vendor reviews and the results of an incident response drill. A partner or a virtual CISO serves as the Qualified Individual, we provide the technical material for the yearly report to the owners, and the same evidence fills in the plan modeled on Publication 5708.
Will you support our tax, practice-management and portal software?
Yes, as the IT layer around them. We handle installs and annual upgrades of the tax package, keep the practice-management, document and portal tools working on your computers and network, size the hardware they need and back up their data. When a fault is inside the vendor's code or service, we raise the case with that vendor, attach logs and screenshots and follow it to a fix, so a preparer is not left waiting on hold. We are not a reseller or customization partner for any accounting application, which is why this page describes them generically.
How do you handle seasonal staff during tax season?
Seasonal preparers get laptops enrolled through Windows Autopilot before January, so they sign in on day one with the tax software, printers and the client portal ready. Their accounts are built from a template with only the folders and portals their role needs, and Keeper shares exactly the credentials they use. On their last day we disable the account, revoke Keeper access and wipe or reclaim the laptop. If preparers bring their own computers, Azure Virtual Desktop keeps client data inside the firm's environment instead of on a personal machine.
What should we do if a laptop with client files is stolen?
Call the help desk first. We lock and wipe the laptop through Intune, revoke its sessions in Entra ID and pull the BitLocker status and recent sign-in logs, which shows whether the drive was encrypted and whether anyone used the account. That evidence goes to you and your counsel, who decide whether the event is a loss of confidentiality under the Board's rule 501.75 or a breach under Texas law. A replacement laptop ships the same day it is approved and rebuilds itself through Autopilot.
Services behind this work
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Everything NetSys delivers in Houston, TX.
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