IT Services and Cybersecurity in the Bay Area
Bay Area companies are spread out: a team in San Francisco, finance in the East Bay, a lab in South San Francisco and people working from Marin to San Jose. NetSys gives them one IT company for the help desk, Microsoft 365, security, backups and networks, delivered remotely from Brooklyn on a month-to-month agreement.
The short answer
NetSys is a managed IT and cybersecurity company, based in Brooklyn, NY, that serves Bay Area businesses entirely over the network. A single agreement can take in the help desk, Microsoft 365, laptops and phones, ThreatDown endpoint detection and response, email filtering, restore-tested backups, the network at every office and the vendors behind your software. Engineers staff the help desk from 1 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific time, seven days a week, and monitoring and emergency response continue through the night; no engineers are sent on site in the Bay Area. Pricing is per user per month after an assessment, on month-to-month terms.
- One office, in Brooklyn, NY; Bay Area companies are supported remotely and through the cloud
- NetSys does not send engineers on site in the Bay Area: laptops arrive enrolled in Intune and Windows Autopilot, and firewalls arrive configured
- 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 (1 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific)
- Month-to-month agreements and 98% client retention
What an IT company handles for a Bay Area business
A typical Bay Area company of 15 to 150 people has grown its IT one decision at a time: a Google or Microsoft tenant a founder set up, laptops bought as people were hired, a firewall nobody has logged in to since the office opened, and a dozen software subscriptions on different credit cards. NetSys replaces that with one accountable provider. The help desk takes everyday requests, NinjaOne patches and monitors every device, ThreatDown and Microsoft Defender for Business watch for attacks, Barracuda filters email, Keeper holds the passwords, and Datto or Veeam backups are restored on a schedule to prove they work. Three Bay Area service pages go deeper: managed IT services, which covers the whole environment and every vendor in it; IT support, which covers the help desk, devices and users; and IT consulting, which covers assessments, migrations and virtual CIO work.
How remote onboarding works for Bay Area companies
Onboarding happens over the network and on video calls. An engineer interviews whoever looks after IT today, installs the NinjaOne agent on each computer, and reviews the firewall, the Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace tenant and the backups. You get a written plan and a per-user price before anything changes. The cutover runs in stages around your calendar, such as a product launch, a fundraising close or a trial date. Staff see a new multifactor sign-in prompt and get one number, one email address and a Teams channel for the help desk. Because NetSys does not send engineers on site in the Bay Area, new laptops ship straight to employees already registered in Windows Autopilot, and network hardware arrives configured for your office manager or cabling contractor to plug in while an engineer in Brooklyn brings it online.
Bay Area industries and the systems they run
The region's mix is unusual. Software and AI startups cluster in SoMa, Mission Bay and along the Peninsula, usually on Macs, cloud tools and a code-repository platform. South San Francisco adopted the name birthplace of biotechnology after Genentech opened there in 1976, and Genentech was still the city's largest employer in its 2022 report, with 8,632 people; biotech teams run an electronic lab notebook, instrument PCs and a quality system. Law firms, venture firms and investment advisers fill the Financial District and Palo Alto, working in a document management system or a portfolio and CRM platform. Oakland is home to Kaiser Permanente's headquarters and a wide network of clinics, foundations and nonprofits, while the North Bay adds wineries and Santa Rosa's medical and electronics employers. NetSys supports the infrastructure under all of these and works with each application vendor when the fault is theirs.
Nine counties, many offices: circuits, power and earthquakes
ABAG counts nine counties and 101 cities and towns in the Bay Area, and a company with staff in several of them needs the same security wherever people sign in. We give every office the same firewall policy and Wi-Fi standard, managed from one Meraki or Fortinet console, and every laptop the same Intune baseline. Internet options to check at each address include Comcast Business, AT&T Business and Sonic, and we design for a second path, either a second carrier or a cellular link on the firewall. Power and the ground are the regional risks. In October 2019 PG&E switched off power to an estimated 2.35 million people across 38 counties to reduce fire danger, and the USGS gives the region a 72 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake between 2014 and 2043. Files in SharePoint and OneDrive, backups copied out of the region and a written recovery plan keep a closed office from closing the company.
Local security notes: Oakland, Muni and UCSF
Three public incidents show what is at stake. In February 2023 a ransomware attack forced the City of Oakland to take its network offline and declare a local state of emergency; phone lines and many non-emergency services went down, and the Play ransomware group later claimed the attack. Over Thanksgiving weekend in 2016, ransomware hit computers at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which switched off ticket machines and fare gates in Muni Metro stations as a precaution. In June 2020, UCSF paid about $1.14 million after attackers encrypted servers in its School of Medicine. A 30-person firm is not a city, but the controls that limit damage are the same: multifactor authentication everywhere, no daily use of administrator accounts, endpoint detection watched by a security operations center, immutable backups and an incident plan that names who calls whom. NetSys has handled more than 30 ransomware incidents in three years and recovered every one.
California law and the industry rules Bay Area firms follow
California Civil Code 1798.82 now requires notice to affected residents within 30 calendar days of discovering a qualifying breach, plus a sample notice to the Attorney General within 15 days after that when more than 500 residents are notified. Civil Code 1798.81.5 requires reasonable security for personal information, and the CCPA, with its new cybersecurity audit and risk assessment regulations, applies to for-profit businesses that meet its revenue or data tests. Industry rules sit on top. Clinics follow the HIPAA Security Rule and the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act; investment advisers and broker-dealers follow the SEC's amended Regulation S-P, which requires an incident response program and customer notice within 30 days; biotech companies keep FDA-regulated electronic records under 21 CFR Part 11; and lawyers owe reasonable efforts to protect client information under ABA Model Rule 1.6(c). This is general information, not legal advice.
Towns and neighborhoods we cover around San Francisco Bay Area
- San Francisco Financial District
- SoMa
- Mission Bay
- Oakland
- Emeryville
- Berkeley
- Walnut Creek
- San Ramon
- Pleasanton
- Fremont
- South San Francisco
- San Mateo
- Redwood City
- Palo Alto
- Mountain View
- San Jose
- San Rafael
- Novato
- Napa
- Santa Rosa
Examples of our client work
- Law firms
Elder law firm
SharePoint document organization for 28 employees, secure client file sharing, email encryption, and employee access controls.
- Wealth management
RIA firm
Barracuda email protection for 117 licensed users, email archiving, cybersecurity monitoring, and account access management.
Cybersecurity for Financial ServicesIT for RIAs and Wealth Management
- Healthcare
Outpatient mental health practice
Support for 32 clinician workstations, secure telehealth access, patient record backups, and phishing protection.
Client names are withheld. These examples were chosen for the work involved, not for where the client is, so none is presented as a San Francisco Bay Area client.
Services in San Francisco Bay Area
Industry depth: IT for Healthcare · IT for Law Firms · Nonprofits · Wealth Management · Life Sciences · IT for Startups
Also from NetSys: small business IT support · 24/7 IT support
Next steps: Managed IT services in the Bay Area · IT support in the Bay Area · IT consulting in the Bay Area · Managed IT services in San Francisco · Cybersecurity in San Francisco · Managed IT services in Oakland · Managed IT services in San Jose · Managed IT services in Santa Rosa · IT support in Santa Rosa · IT services in Palo Alto · IT services in Fremont · IT services across California
Nearby: Palo Alto, CA · Fremont, CA · California
More in California: Fresno, CA · Santa Clarita, CA · Burbank, CA · Orange County, CA
Service pages for San Francisco Bay Area
- Managed IT Services in San Francisco
- IT Consulting in San Francisco
- IT Support in San Francisco
- Managed IT Services in Oakland
- Managed IT Services in Santa Rosa
- Cybersecurity in San Francisco
- IT Consulting in Bay Area
- IT Support in Bay Area
- IT Support in Berkeley
- IT Support in Santa Rosa
- Managed IT Services in Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area FAQs
Which IT company should a Bay Area business hire?
Choose one whose answers you can check. Ask each IT company in the Bay Area who holds your administrator passwords, when it last restored one of your backups and can show the log, whether the contract has a term you cannot leave, and what happens when ransomware hits at 2 a.m. NetSys answers plainly: your company holds the credentials in Keeper, restores are tested on a schedule, agreements run month to month, and severe incidents go straight to your dedicated engineer. NetSys has been in business since 1998, and its engineers hold degrees in electrical engineering, electronics engineering and computer science.
How does IT support work for Bay Area organizations?
Everything runs remotely from our Brooklyn office. An engineer answers calls, emails and Teams messages on the help desk every day of the week, starting at 1 a.m. Pacific and finishing at 8 p.m., and overnight problems still reach the emergency line. Engineers connect to laptops through NinjaOne and manage Microsoft 365, Intune and firewalls through their consoles. Because there are no on-site visits in the Bay Area, replacement laptops ship to the employee ready to sign in, and anything physical, such as new cabling, is done by a contractor you choose with our engineer on the call.
What IT services do you offer in the Bay Area?
Managed IT services, where NetSys owns the whole environment and its vendors; IT support, covering the help desk, devices and users; cybersecurity, including ThreatDown MDR, Microsoft Defender for Business, Barracuda email protection, KnowBe4 training and Rapid7 InsightVM scanning; backup and disaster recovery with Datto SIRIS and Veeam; and IT consulting for assessments, Microsoft 365 and Azure migrations, SOC 2 readiness and virtual CIO work. The only free offer is a remote external penetration test within an agreed scope, which shows what an attacker on the internet can see of your network.
How are IT services priced for Bay Area companies?
Managed IT and IT support are priced per user per month, and the number comes out of an assessment, so we do not publish a rate. The fee moves with the number of offices and servers, specialised applications and their vendors, the compliance evidence you must produce, and after-hours project work. Projects such as a tenant migration or an office move are quoted at a fixed price after scoping, and hardware and licenses are quoted separately. Agreements run month to month, and 98 percent of NetSys clients stay.
Does the three-hour time difference with New York cause problems?
It tends to help. The help desk opens at 1 a.m. Pacific, so an engineer is already working when the first Bay Area employee logs in, and it stays staffed until 8 p.m. Pacific. Patching and maintenance can run in the early morning, Pacific time, and finish before your staff start. Project calls and change windows are always scheduled in Pacific time, and your account manager keeps a real cell number for anything urgent. The one thing the distance rules out is a technician walking into your office, which is why every design we deliver works without one.
Do you cover the whole Bay Area or only San Francisco?
The whole region, because the service does not depend on where an office sits. It covers San Francisco, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, Walnut Creek, the Tri-Valley, Fremont, the Peninsula, Palo Alto, San Jose and the North Bay up to Santa Rosa, plus employees working from home anywhere. A company with offices in three counties gets one firewall standard, one device policy and one help desk. Separate pages cover managed IT in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, and the Palo Alto and Fremont hubs cover those cities in more detail.
What should a Bay Area company do in the first hour of a ransomware attack?
Disconnect affected computers from the network but leave them powered on, so evidence in memory survives. Call your IT provider's emergency line, then your cyber insurer, before anyone negotiates or wipes anything. Under NetSys's response commitments, a critical issue gets a phone response within ten minutes and remote work within thirty; ThreatDown can isolate infected devices from the console, and immutable backups mean recovery does not depend on the attackers. Keep a written log of times and actions, because California's breach statute starts a 30-day clock for notifying affected residents when personal information was taken.
One remote IT team for every Bay Area office and home worker.
Book a call with an engineer to walk through your offices, devices and vendors. You get a written plan and a per-user price before anything changes.