IT Support for Accounting Firms in Westchester County, NY
A Westchester accounting practice can have six people in a Harrison office in July and fourteen in March, with partners finishing returns from home on weekends. NetSys keeps that practice's tax and practice-management software reachable, its client files protected and its written security plan accurate, and our engineers come to the office when hardware needs attention.
The short answer
NetSys provides IT support and managed IT services for accounting and CPA firms in Westchester County. We run the help desk, Microsoft 365, multifactor authentication, ThreatDown endpoint detection and response, Barracuda email protection and tested backups, and we keep the firm's Written Information Security Plan matched to the controls in place under the FTC Safeguards Rule and IRS Publication 4557. Because the county is inside our on-site coverage, most problems are solved remotely and an engineer visits for equipment, network and seasonal setup work. Terms are month to month, with no 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 Westchester County client.
What changes for a Westchester accounting practice
Westchester's accounting firms range from county offices of national and regional firms in Harrison, White Plains and Rye Brook to small practices in villages across the county, and the New York State Society of CPAs has had a Westchester chapter since 1954. Clients often include owners of closely held businesses, trusts and families with complicated returns, so one compromised mailbox can expose returns, K-1s and bank details for many households at once. Tax season changes the environment every year: seasonal preparers need accounts by January, scanners and second monitors at temporary desks, and remote access for partners who work late from home. When April ends, those accounts must close on each person's last day. Commuting shapes the design too. Staff on the Harlem, Hudson and New Haven lines open client files on trains and in home offices, so the managed laptop, not the office network, is the real security boundary. We build for that first, then visit the office for the parts that need hands, such as a new scanning station or a firewall replacement before January.
How a Westchester practice gets help, remotely and in person
The county sits inside our on-site area. Harrison and White Plains are around an hour's drive from Park Slope outside rush hour and Yonkers closer, so a visit is booked like any other appointment. Most work never needs one: a locked account, a tax program update that fails, a copier that stops scanning to a folder. Help desk engineers fix those remotely, and they are at their desks from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern every day of the week, which matters before April 15 and October 15 when partners start early and finish late. Ransomware, a failed server or a dead internet circuit skips the queue and reaches your dedicated engineer directly. In-person visits cover new workstations and scanners, network changes and a pre-season check in December, when we patch everything, test a restore and confirm every preparer can sign in from home.
Tax software, client portals and the network between them
A practice usually runs tax preparation and practice-management software either on an office server or as a hosted service, plus a document management system, a client portal for file exchange and e-signatures, and Microsoft 365. Each needs different care. A server-based tax program needs a patched Windows Server, a tested backup and secure remote access for staff at home. Hosted programs need multifactor authentication and Conditional Access so only managed laptops can sign in. The portal replaces email attachments, so tax documents stop sitting in inboxes, and outbound mail filtering can encrypt or hold messages that contain Social Security numbers. A practice still on Windows Server 2016 has until January 12, 2027 before security updates stop, so the replacement belongs in this year's budget. We coordinate with each software vendor on application issues rather than claiming to support their programs ourselves.
Fraud, storms and continuity during filing season
Two risks dominate. The first is impersonation: fake IRS notices, a phishing message copying a client's request to send a refund to a new account, and attackers who hijack an existing thread with a client to redirect a payment. Callback rules, banners on external mail and KnowBe4 simulations timed for the autumn deal with most of it. The second is losing the office. Full power restoration after Isaias in August 2020 took a week or more in parts of the county, and a repeat in March would land in the busiest weeks of the year. So client files live in SharePoint, the tax program is reachable from home through a protected connection or the vendor's cloud, and a recent backup sits off site. Staff keep working from home on current data, and a timed restore in December proves it before the season begins.
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 Westchester County.
Compliance rules for Westchester accounting firms
FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314)
The FTC lists tax preparation firms among the financial institutions the rule covers, so a CPA practice needs a written information security program, a Qualified Individual who supervises it, and multifactor authentication for anyone accessing customer information. Firms that keep information on fewer than 5,000 consumers are exempt from certain provisions, not from the rule. A breach involving the unencrypted information of at least 500 consumers must be reported to the FTC as soon as possible and no later than 30 days after discovery.
IRS Publication 4557 and the WISP
The IRS tells tax professionals they must keep a written information security plan and review and test it regularly, and its Publication 5708 provides a sample plan sized for small practices. Publication 4557, Safeguarding Taxpayer Data, works as the checklist: multifactor authentication, encryption, backups and a plan for reporting data theft. We keep the WISP aligned with what is actually running, so it describes real controls rather than intentions, and we update it whenever a control changes.
New York SHIELD Act for GLBA-covered firms
A firm that is subject to and compliant with the regulations under Title V of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which include the Safeguards Rule, is treated as meeting New York's safeguards requirement under § 899-bb. The notice duty in § 899-aa still applies: New Yorkers whose information was exposed must hear from the firm within 30 days of the breach being discovered, with copies of the notice going to the state's Attorney General, its Department of State and the State Police. This is general information, not legal advice.
This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm your obligations with counsel.
Accounting Firms in Westchester County: FAQs
Who provides IT support for accounting firms in Westchester County?
NetSys does. We are a Brooklyn IT company, founded in 1998, whose engineers work on site anywhere in Westchester. We can run the firm's entire environment, from the help desk, Microsoft 365 and security to backups and the network, or work beside an in-house IT person on a co-managed basis. Our engineers are certified in Cisco and Microsoft, and your firm gets a dedicated account manager you can reach on a real cell number. Agreements run month to month.
Do you provide on-site IT support for accounting firms in Westchester County?
Yes. Every Westchester town is within our on-site radius, and an engineer will come to a practice in White Plains, Harrison, Rye Brook or Tarrytown for work that needs hands: replacing a server or firewall, setting up seasonal workstations and scanners, rewiring a network closet or moving offices. Most requests are solved remotely first because that is quicker. A visit is booked when the help desk or your dedicated engineer decides remote work will not finish the job, and before filing season we schedule one ahead of time.
What does IT support cost for a CPA firm in Westchester County?
We quote a per-user monthly fee once we have assessed the practice, and there is no public price list. For an accounting firm the fee depends on headcount including seasonal preparers, whether tax software runs on an office server or as a hosted service, the number of offices, how much WISP and Safeguards Rule documentation you need, and how many visits a year the office is likely to need. A server replacement or a move to hosted software is scoped and quoted on its own, so the monthly fee covers only ongoing work.
How do you help Westchester accounting firms meet the FTC Safeguards Rule?
We start with the written risk assessment and data inventory the rule expects, then put the required controls in place: multifactor authentication for everyone who touches client data, encryption on laptops and in transit, access limited by role, logging and monitoring, secure disposal of old drives, and staff training. Your designated Qualified Individual receives written reports on the program, and we revise the WISP whenever a control changes. If an incident happens, our logs and records help establish whether the 500-consumer FTC notification threshold has been reached.
Do you support tax and practice-management software?
We support the infrastructure those programs depend on: the server or hosted environment, Windows updates, remote access, multifactor sign-in, printers and scanners, backups and the network. Problems inside the tax or practice-management software stay with that vendor's support team, and we open and follow the ticket for you so a partner is not on hold during filing season. Before each season we check the vendor's system requirements against your hardware and Windows versions, so the annual release installs cleanly on every machine.
How do you prepare a practice for tax season?
In November and December we create accounts for returning and new seasonal staff with an end date set on day one, prepare their laptops through Intune and Windows Autopilot or at a temporary desk, check scanner and printer drivers, apply updates and run a timed restore of the tax data and client files. A phishing refresher goes out before the season's fake IRS notices start arriving. After April 15 and again after October 15, seasonal accounts are disabled, devices are wiped or reassigned, and the WISP's access list is updated to match.
Services behind this work
Related pages
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Accounting Firms elsewhere: IT Support for Accounting Firms in White Plains, NY · IT Support for Accounting Firms in Nassau County, NY · IT Support for Accounting Firms in Garden City, NY · IT Support for Accounting Firms in Melville, NY · IT Support for Accounting Firms in Brooklyn · IT Support for Accounting Firms in New Jersey · IT Support for Accounting Firms in New York City · IT Support for Accounting Firms on Long Island
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