IT Support for Accounting Firms on Long Island
A Long Island practice can have a Garden City office, a Melville office and preparers working from home across Nassau and Suffolk every filing season. NetSys supports the systems behind that work from our Brooklyn office: client files, tax software access, seasonal accounts, and recovery that does not depend on one building keeping its power.
The short answer
NetSys provides IT support for accounting firms on Long Island, covering Nassau and Suffolk practices with remote management and on-site engineering from our Brooklyn office. The work includes help desk, Microsoft 365, access for seasonal staff, email and endpoint security, tested backups and the controls a WISP describes under the FTC Safeguards Rule. Agreements run 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 Long Island client.
What changes for a Long Island practice
Partners and preparers at a Long Island firm can live anywhere from the Queens line to the East End, so remote access has to work as well from a kitchen table in Smithtown as it does in the office. Coastal storms have cut power and cable across the Island for days at a time, so we plan for a dark office: tax software hosted or in the cloud where the vendor supports it, the document store and email in Microsoft 365, and a restore tested before January. Seasonal preparers get named accounts, access to only the client folders they need, and an end date set on their first day. Our accounting industry page covers the firm-wide scope; this page adds what changes across Nassau and Suffolk.
Everything else about how we serve the area, including coverage, on-site cadence and the honest answer about where our office is, lives on our Long Island location page.
Compliance rules for Long Island accounting firms
FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314)
Tax preparation is a financial activity under the rule, so CPA firms and preparers need a written information security program. The rule names the controls, including multifactor authentication for anyone accessing your systems and encryption of client data in transit and at rest. Firms holding records on fewer than 5,000 consumers are exempt from four provisions, such as the written risk assessment and the annual board report, not from the rule. An unauthorized acquisition of unencrypted information about 500 or more consumers must be reported to the FTC no later than 30 days after discovery.
IRS Publication 4557 and your WISP
The IRS states that federal law requires tax and accounting professionals to create and maintain a Written Information Security Plan, and it offers Publication 5708 as a template. Publication 4557 (Rev. 6-2024) is the working guide: it covers multifactor authentication and tells firms to report client data theft to their local IRS Stakeholder Liaison and to each state where they prepare returns. We keep your WISP matched to the controls actually running.
NY SHIELD Act (GBL §899-aa and §899-bb)
SHIELD covers anyone holding New York residents' private information. Under §899-bb, a firm that is subject to and compliant with the GLBA regulations, the Safeguards Rule among them, is deemed to meet SHIELD's safeguards requirement. The notice duty in §899-aa still applies: affected New Yorkers must be told within 30 days of discovering a breach, and the Attorney General, the Department of State and the State Police notified.
This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm your obligations with counsel.
Accounting Firms in Long Island: FAQs
Who provides IT support for accounting firms on Long Island?
NetSys does, from its one office in Brooklyn, with remote management and on-site engineering across Nassau and Suffolk. We can run the whole environment, from help desk and Microsoft 365 to security and backups, or work alongside an in-house IT person on a co-managed basis. We have been in business since 1998, and agreements run month to month.
What compliance rules apply to accounting firms on Long Island?
Most firms answer to the FTC Safeguards Rule, the IRS requirement to keep a Written Information Security Plan, and New York's SHIELD Act. The first two shape your controls and the document that describes them; SHIELD adds a 30-day duty to notify affected New Yorkers after a breach. This is general information, not legal advice.
How fast is on-site response on Long Island?
It depends on your agreement; we do not promise a fixed arrival time for any Long Island town. Remote response targets by severity are listed in the response-time table on our managed IT services page. Visits to offices in Nassau and Suffolk are scheduled around the problem, and a locked account or failed update is usually fixed remotely first.
What do managed IT services for accounting firms on Long Island include?
A managed agreement covers help desk, 24/7 monitoring and patching, Microsoft 365 administration, endpoint detection and response, email security and backups with timed restores. Firms with offices in both counties get one standard for firewalls and remote access. Your tax software vendor keeps application support, and we coordinate with them. Pricing is per user per month.
What cybersecurity do accounting firms on Long Island need?
They need multifactor authentication wherever client data lives, endpoint detection and response on every device, and backups an attacker cannot delete. Add email filtering for refund and payment-change fraud, alerts on mailbox forwarding rules, and a callback rule for any change to bank details. Time a phishing refresher for the autumn, before the filing-season rush.
Services behind this work
Related pages
Other industries in Long Island: IT Support for Law Firms on Long Island · IT Support for Medical Practices on Long Island · IT Support for Dental Practices on Long Island · IT Support for Construction Companies on Long Island
Accounting Firms elsewhere: IT Support for Accounting Firms in Brooklyn · IT Support for Accounting Firms in New Jersey · IT Support for Accounting Firms in New York City
Everything NetSys delivers in Long Island, NY.
Scope IT support for your Long Island team.
Share the applications, deadlines and onsite requirements that matter to your business. We will discuss support, security and project responsibilities before agreeing a scope.