Cybersecurity Services in Austin
NetSys provides cybersecurity services to businesses in Austin: 24/7 managed detection and response on every device, identity and email protection across Microsoft 365, vulnerability scanning, staff training and immutable backups, with an engineer acting on alerts rather than forwarding them. Austin is served from Brooklyn, one hour behind us on Central time. Monitoring, help desk and remediation run remotely around the clock from Brooklyn, with coverage hours stated in Central time in the proposal. On-site commitments are arranged in advance and sized to the engagement. Most clients run between 10 and 75 seats, and every agreement is month to month.
The short answer
NetSys provides cybersecurity to businesses in Austin: ThreatDown managed detection and response on every device, multifactor authentication and Conditional Access across Microsoft 365, Barracuda email protection, Rapid7 vulnerability scanning, security awareness training and immutable backups with tested restores. Delivery is remote-first from Brooklyn, with coverage hours stated in Central time, and on-site commitments are arranged in advance and sized to the engagement, up to a dedicated engineer with a drive time generally under an hour where regular presence is part of the scope. Most clients run between 10 and 75 seats, and every agreement is month to month.
How cybersecurity is delivered in Austin
Austin is served from Brooklyn, one hour behind us on Central time. Monitoring, help desk and remediation run remotely around the clock from Brooklyn, with coverage hours stated in Central time in the proposal. On-site commitments outside the tri-state area are arranged in advance and sized to the engagement: a mostly remote engagement needs no dedicated on-site engineer, while an engagement that calls for regular presence, such as vCISO work with someone on site two days a week, gets a dedicated engineer whose drive time is generally under an hour, depending on where that engineer and your office are. Hardware ships pre-configured, so most projects need no visit at all. The buildings decide a lot of the design. Downtown and the Domain have carrier choice, but East Austin conversions and Round Rock office parks often run on one Spectrum circuit, and startups arrive with a Google Workspace tenant nobody has hardened, so identity is the first job. The carriers we see most in Austin are Spectrum Business, AT&T Business Fiber and Google Fiber, and the failover design starts with which of them actually reach your building.
Who cybersecurity in Austin is built for
Most of our Austin work sits in Downtown Austin, the Domain, East Austin, Round Rock and Cedar Park: technology and professional firms on Rippling, medical practices on athenahealth, real estate firms on AppFolio, law firms on Clio, semiconductor and hardware suppliers on Epicor, and nonprofits on Bloomerang. Each carries its own compliance load, which the section below covers, and each has a line-of-business vendor we coordinate with rather than work around. Companies with an internal IT person fit too; in that case we supply the monitoring, the security stack and the after-hours coverage behind them, and they keep their projects.
What tends to go wrong in Austin
Two things shape the continuity design here. First, the weather and the grid: the February 2021 ERCOT grid failure left offices without power for days and flash flooding closes low-lying areas every spring, so UPS runtime and out-of-state backups are the design case. Second, the attacks that actually land locally are ordinary ones, and the public record shows how they go: the August 2019 coordinated ransomware attack on 23 Texas local governments, which the state traced to a single managed service provider's remote-management tool. The controls in the next section are the ones that would have changed those stories.
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
- Written incident response plan with named owners, tested once a year on a tabletop exercise
- Post-incident reports written for your insurer and your counsel, not just your IT team
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
- Barracuda Email Protection with impersonation protection, plus DMARC enforcement for the domain
- KnowBe4 training on a recurring schedule, with a wire-transfer and vendor-change verification procedure written for finance
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
- Immutable, off-site backups with restores run on a schedule and the result written down
- Free remote external penetration test before you hire us; Tier 2 source-code testing quoted per codebase
A 45-person nonprofit in East Austin
The specific engagements behind this profile are under NDA, so it is written as a generalization rather than a named client. Our published, client-approved outcomes are in case studies.
A nonprofit in East Austin with 45 staff, client data in Bloomerang and five permanent Global Administrators in the tenant. An auditor asked for a written incident response plan and there is not one. There is no multifactor authentication on three of the admin accounts, a former employee's login is still active, the backups have never been restored, and a written incident response plan does not exist.
- Microsoft 365 investigation: sign-in logs, forwarding rules and consent grants reviewed to establish whether a mailbox was compromised, then multifactor authentication and Entra ID Conditional Access enforced for every account
- Barracuda Email Protection placed ahead of the mailboxes and SPF, DKIM and DMARC corrected so the domain can no longer be spoofed, with a callback rule adopted for any change in payment instructions
- Standing administrator rights converted to just-in-time roles through Entra ID Privileged Identity Management, with break-glass accounts kept outside it
- Datto SIRIS backups with immutable cloud copies for the servers and a Microsoft 365 backup for the tenant, with a restore tested and the result written down for the insurer
- A written incident response plan with named owners, the insurer's hotline and counsel's contact, tested on a tabletop exercise
- Vendor questionnaire answered from the documented controls, with the evidence attached rather than promised
Every device is watched by a team that responds, every account sits behind multifactor authentication and Conditional Access, the domain cannot be spoofed and the backups restore. The questionnaire gets answered from documentation. Month to month, like every NetSys agreement.
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.
Compliance in Austin: § 521.053 and what sits on top of it
If you hold personal information on a resident of Texas, Texas Business and Commerce Code § 521.053 requires notice to affected residents within 60 days of determining a breach occurred and, when 250 or more Texans are affected, notice to the Attorney General within 30 days. The Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, in force since July 1, 2024, adds data-protection assessments and consumer rights for businesses above the small-business threshold, and Texas HB 300 tightens health-information handling beyond HIPAA. Healthcare practices carry HIPAA and HB 300, energy and industrial firms answer to customer and insurer questionnaires, and defense suppliers face CMMC 2.0. The security service is built to produce the evidence those rules ask for: multifactor authentication and Conditional Access reports, endpoint detection coverage, vulnerability scan results, backup restore records and a tested incident response plan. Most firms we take over have none of it documented, which is the part that matters if you ever have to demonstrate compliance, so the documentation is built during onboarding rather than sold as a separate project.
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, whether 24/7 response is needed beyond monitoring, 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.
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.
Not a fit: organizations that want a security product installed and left alone. The service is monitored, reviewed and reported monthly, and it changes the way administrators, finance staff and vendors work. If that is not wanted, a tool purchase serves better than an engagement.
Read next
Industry pages: IT for Professional Services & Consulting · IT for Healthcare
Terms used on this page: Managed Detection and Response (MDR) · Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) · Conditional Access
Guides: MDR versus antivirus for a small business · the Conditional Access policies to turn on first
Related pages
Read the full Cyber Security service page. See all locations and service areas.
Also in Austin: Managed IT Services · IT Consulting · IT Support
Cybersecurity elsewhere: Houston · Dallas · San Antonio · New York City · Brooklyn, NY · Nassau County, NY
Related services: Penetration Testing · Cyber Insurance Readiness · Security Assessments · Managed Detection & Response (MDR)
Cybersecurity in Austin: FAQs
What is managed detection and response, and do we need it?
MDR puts an EDR agent on every device and a 24/7 team behind it that isolates a compromised machine and investigates, rather than an antivirus that quarantines a file and moves on. Cyber insurers now ask for it by name, which is the practical reason most businesses in Austin end up with it.
Can you work alongside our internal IT person?
Yes. In a co-managed arrangement your person keeps the day-to-day and we run monitoring, the security stack, vulnerability management and after-hours response, with the split written into the agreement.
Do we need a security assessment before signing up?
The free external test is where most engagements start. A fuller assessment of the tenant, devices, network and backups is scoped separately and produces a prioritized fix list that becomes the first ninety days of the service.
Do you have an office in Austin?
Our office is in Brooklyn, NY. Austin is served from Brooklyn, one hour behind us on Central time. Outside the tri-state area the on-site arrangement is agreed before the engagement starts and sized to what it needs: none for a mostly remote account, and a dedicated engineer, generally within an hour's drive, where regular presence such as vCISO work with someone on site two days a week is part of the scope. The proposal states that arrangement, coverage hours in Central time and any travel in writing, and the agreement runs month to month.
What does Texas require after a data breach?
§ 521.053 gives a business 60 days from determining a breach occurred to notify affected residents, and 250 or more affected Texans means the Attorney General must be told within 30 days. Texas HB 300 adds stricter rules for health information. Logs, encryption and a written response plan are how a small business meets the deadlines.
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.