Cybersecurity · Austin

Cybersecurity Services in Austin, TX

Texas has watched ransomware take down town halls, appellate courts and hospital systems, much of it within a few miles of the Capitol. NetSys protects Austin businesses with managed detection and response on every device, identity and email controls, vulnerability scanning, staff training and backups an attacker cannot delete, run remotely from Brooklyn by engineers who act on alerts.

All IT services in Austin, TX

The short answer

NetSys provides cybersecurity services to Austin organizations: ThreatDown managed detection and response on every computer, multifactor authentication and Entra ID Conditional Access, Barracuda email protection, Rapid7 vulnerability scanning, KnowBe4 security awareness training, Keeper password management and immutable Datto or Veeam backups with tested restores. Everything is delivered remotely and through the cloud from Brooklyn, and NetSys does not send engineers on site in Austin. A staffed security operations center works detections 24/7, and our help desk answers from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. Central daily. Ongoing protection is priced per user per month, and agreements run month to month.

Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.

How cybersecurity is delivered in Austin

Every protection we run for an Austin company is managed through the cloud. The ThreatDown agent reports to a security operations center that can cut a compromised computer off from the network wherever it sits, whether that is a desk on Congress Avenue or a laptop on a home connection in Cedar Park. Conditional Access policies live in your Entra ID tenant, Barracuda filters mail before it reaches inboxes, and Rapid7 scans your network through a small collector we ship preconfigured. No engineer travels to Austin to respond to an incident; containment happens remotely, which is faster than waiting for anyone to arrive. If a device has to be rebuilt, a replacement ships through Windows Autopilot while the original is kept intact for investigation. Monitoring runs 24/7 from Brooklyn, and so does emergency service. Our staffed help-desk hours are 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time (3 a.m. to 10 p.m. Central), seven days a week. The proposal states severe-incident escalation, authorized remediation and any other after-hours work.

What the 2019 and 2020 Texas attacks teach

The August 2019 ransomware that hit 23 Texas local governments on the same day is the case every Austin company should study, because the mayor of one affected town said the intruders reached the city through the outside firm that managed its IT. An IT provider's remote-management tool is a key to every client it serves. Ask any provider, including us, how that access is protected: whether every engineer signs in with multifactor authentication, whether access is limited by client, and whether remote sessions are logged. The May 2020 attack on the Office of Court Administration taught a second lesson. The state's cloud-based filing services, eFileTexas and re:SearchTX, kept working while the courts' own network was shut down, because what ran in the cloud sat outside the damage.

Identity and email: where many Austin compromises start

Many business compromises begin with a stolen sign-in or a convincing email rather than a clever exploit. In an Austin office that can look like a fake e-signature request sent to a title company, a vendor banking change emailed to a contractor's accounts payable desk, or a fake recruiter message to a developer at a fast-growing startup. The controls are specific. Every account signs in with multifactor authentication, and Conditional Access blocks sign-ins from unmanaged devices and from countries where you do not work. Legacy protocols that bypass multifactor are turned off. Barracuda checks links and attachments before delivery, and DMARC, SPF and DKIM reduce spoofing of your domain. KnowBe4 runs phishing simulations and short training on a schedule, and anyone who clicks gets a two-minute lesson instead of a reprimand.

Scanning, MDR and the cyber insurance renewal

Cyber insurance applications ask the same questions in different words: is multifactor authentication enforced everywhere, is there endpoint detection and response with people behind it, are backups offline or immutable, is training recurring, and how quickly are critical patches installed. We answer with evidence rather than checkboxes. Rapid7 InsightVM scans every device and your internet-facing addresses on a schedule, and findings are ranked so the first fixes are the ones attackers use. Machines still on Windows 10, which lost support on October 14, 2025, and servers on Windows Server 2016, whose extended support ends January 12, 2027, are flagged for replacement. The free external penetration test, run remotely against an agreed scope, shows what an outsider can see. NetSys has handled more than 30 ransomware incidents in three years and fully recovered every one, and clients with a disaster recovery plan were back within 24 hours.

Texas law and the security program behind it

Texas now gives smaller businesses a concrete reason to document their security. Chapter 542 of the Business and Commerce Code, effective September 1, 2025, bars exemplary damages in a breach lawsuit against a Texas business entity with fewer than 250 employees that had a qualifying cybersecurity program in place when the breach happened. The program must include administrative, technical and physical safeguards and conform to a recognized framework such as NIST guidance or the CIS Controls, scaled by size: simplified requirements such as password policies and training below 20 employees, CIS Controls Implementation Group 1 from 20 to 99, and the full framework from 100 to 249. Separately, the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act requires covered controllers to keep reasonable data security practices, and section 521.053 sets the notice clock after a breach. We map your controls to the framework and keep the evidence. This is general information, not legal advice.

What is included

Cybersecurity in Austin: what NetSys delivers

Watch and respond

ThreatDown MDR and EDR on every device, with a 24/7 team that isolates and investigates rather than emails
Rapid7 InsightIDR or Microsoft Sentinel collecting identity, email, endpoint and firewall logs so an intrusion is visible in one place

Harden the tenant and the people

Microsoft Defender for Business, Entra ID Conditional Access and phishing-resistant sign-in for finance staff
Legacy authentication off, dormant accounts closed, forwarding rules and consent grants reviewed monthly

Measure and recover

Rapid7 InsightVM scans of the internal and external footprint, with a monthly fix list
Managed firewall with intrusion prevention, segmentation and vendor access that is logged and switched off when the work ends

Published case study

Firewall, antivirus and maintenance for a five-person office

A five-person office needed the basics done properly rather than an enterprise stack. NetSys replaced the internet provider's router with a business-grade firewall configured with sensible rules, secure remote access and logging, deployed managed antivirus on every machine with updates and alerts handled centrally, and put patching, backup checks and health reviews on a schedule. The agreement covers what the office needs and nothing it does not, month to month. No outcome figures were measured for publication.

Read the full case study (5-person office)

From our client work

Cybersecurity work for other clients

Insurance
Regional title insurance company
Barracuda email protection for 85 users, phishing simulations, employee security training, and MFA deployment.
Security Awareness & Phishing Training IT for Insurance Agencies and Brokers

Client names are withheld. These examples were chosen for the work involved, not for where the client is, so none is presented as a Austin client.

What cybersecurity costs in Austin

Cybersecurity is priced per user per month when it runs as an ongoing service, and per project for an assessment or a remediation. What moves the number: how many devices and identities are in scope, how much incident remediation and recovery is needed beyond the monitoring and authorized MDR actions in scope, which compliance standard the evidence has to satisfy, and whether the Microsoft 365 tenant is already on Business Premium or the security tooling comes from us. The free external penetration test costs nothing and runs remotely before any of that. Our managed IT pricing page explains how the fee is built.

How the monthly fee is built

Who this fits, and who it does not

Best fit: businesses with enough people, money movement or regulated data that a breach would hurt, and no security team of their own: professional practices, healthcare groups, importers, financial firms, nonprofits and agencies holding client credentials. Companies with an internal IT person fit as a co-managed arrangement.

Cybersecurity in Austin: FAQs

How does cybersecurity work for Austin organizations?

Protection runs continuously from the cloud. ThreatDown watches every endpoint, and a staffed security operations center investigates detections at any hour, isolating a machine when the evidence warrants it. Our engineers then work the incident with you: they reset credentials, review sign-in logs, restore files from immutable backups and document what happened for your insurer. Day-to-day tuning, scan reviews and training reports come through your account manager. NetSys does not send responders on site in Austin, and every step, including a rebuilt laptop shipped through Windows Autopilot, is handled remotely.

What do cybersecurity services in Austin include, and how are they priced?

The ongoing service includes ThreatDown MDR, multifactor authentication and Conditional Access, Barracuda email protection, Rapid7 vulnerability scanning, KnowBe4 training, Keeper and tested immutable backups, priced per user per month. Assessments, incident response work and remediation projects are quoted after scoping. The figure depends on device and account counts, whether Microsoft 365 already runs on a Business Premium license that includes the identity features, and how much compliance evidence your customers or insurer require. The external penetration test that usually starts the conversation costs nothing.

What is managed detection and response, and does a small Austin company need it?

Antivirus blocks known bad files. Managed detection and response puts an agent on every device that records behavior, backed by analysts who investigate suspicious activity and can cut a machine off the network while an attack is under way. Attackers increasingly use legitimate admin tools and stolen passwords, which antivirus does not flag. For a 15-person firm, MDR is the difference between learning about an intrusion from an alert and learning about it from a ransom note, and cyber insurers ask for it by name on their applications.

Can you check whether outside access to our systems is a risk?

Yes. We review which outside parties can reach your systems: the current IT provider's remote-management tool, software vendors with support accounts, the phone system installer, the payroll platform and any contractor with a VPN login. For each one we record how they sign in, whether multifactor authentication is enforced, and whether access is always on or opened only when needed. The August 2019 Texas attack is the reason to ask, and the answers often lead to closing accounts nobody remembered creating. You are welcome to ask us the same questions about our own access.

What happens if an Austin office is hit by ransomware?

Call your dedicated engineer immediately; ransomware never waits in the help desk queue. Containment comes first: infected machines are isolated through ThreatDown, compromised accounts are disabled and their sessions revoked, and the firewall blocks the attacker's channels. Then we preserve evidence for your insurer and any law enforcement report, work out how the attackers got in, and restore from immutable backups they could not reach. If personal information was taken, your attorney decides on notices under Texas law, and we supply the facts and timeline they need.

Start with the free test

See what an attacker sees before they do.

The free assessment is a remote external penetration test, limited to the information available to NetSys and the external scope we agree with you. Internal reviews and ongoing security management are scoped separately.

Explore Cybersecurity Scope 845-203-3914