Cybersecurity · Boston

Cybersecurity Services in Boston, MA

Boston has watched a children's hospital knocked offline, a public library take its systems offline and a regional health insurer lose member data to ransomware. NetSys builds the controls that make attacks like those harder and shorter for a Boston business: detection on every device, locked-down sign-ins, filtered email and backups an attacker cannot erase.

All IT services in Boston, MA

The short answer

NetSys provides cybersecurity for Boston organizations: ThreatDown managed detection and response on every device, Microsoft Defender for Business, Entra ID Conditional Access and multifactor authentication, Barracuda email protection, Rapid7 InsightVM vulnerability scanning, KnowBe4 training, Keeper password management and immutable backups with tested restores. It is remote and cloud-based, without on-site work: a compromised laptop is isolated and its accounts locked from Brooklyn, wherever the laptop happens to be. Monitoring and emergency service run 24/7, and every control is documented so it doubles as evidence for 201 CMR 17.00, insurers and clients. Ongoing security is priced per user per month.

Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.

How cybersecurity is delivered in Boston

Security work for a Boston client happens in consoles, not hallways. ThreatDown agents on each computer stream activity to analysts who can isolate a machine within minutes of a confirmed threat, Conditional Access policies decide which devices and locations may sign in, and Barracuda filters mail before it reaches Outlook. No NetSys engineer is stationed in Boston, and the service is built so that nothing depends on one: a stolen laptop is locked or wiped through Intune, a phished account is disabled and its sessions revoked in Entra ID, and a suspicious inbox rule is removed before the attacker can use it. Findings and fixes go to your leadership each month, written in plain language. 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, seven days a week. The proposal states severe-incident escalation, authorized remediation and any other after-hours work.

Attacks Boston organizations have already lived through

The local record explains where we start. In April 2014 a distributed denial-of-service attack disrupted Boston Children's Hospital's network for at least two weeks; the man behind it was sentenced in 2019 to more than ten years in federal prison. In August 2021 a cyberattack caused a systemwide outage at the Boston Public Library, pausing public computers and printing. In 2023 Point32Health disclosed a ransomware attack on Harvard Pilgrim Health Care: the intruders had access from March 28 until it was found on April 17, systems went offline, and data on more than 2.8 million people was taken. The same year, a flaw in MOVEit Transfer, file-transfer software from Burlington-based Progress Software, exposed records at organizations worldwide, and the lawsuits were consolidated in federal court in Boston.

Controls mapped to 201 CMR 17.04

The Massachusetts regulation reads like a security checklist, and each line maps to something we run. Secure authentication and unique user IDs: Entra ID with multifactor authentication and no shared accounts. Access limited to people who need it: role-based groups and quarterly access reviews. Encryption of personal information on laptops and portable devices: BitLocker and FileVault enforced by Intune, with a report showing each device's status. Encryption across public networks and wireless: TLS on mail and file sharing and enterprise-grade Wi-Fi security. Reasonable monitoring: ThreatDown MDR plus sign-in alerts. Current patches and firewall protection: NinjaOne patch reports and a managed firewall. Up-to-date malware protection: ThreatDown and Defender. Employee training: KnowBe4 courses and phishing tests with completion records.

Wire fraud and impersonation in Boston deals

Real estate closings, venture rounds, tuition payments and ordinary invoice runs move large sums by wire, and business email compromise follows the money. The pattern rarely changes: an attacker gets into one mailbox, or registers a lookalike domain, waits for a payment thread and sends new bank details at the right moment. Our defenses sit at several layers. Barracuda flags impersonation and lookalike senders, DMARC, SPF and DKIM on your own domain reduce spoofing of your name, Conditional Access blocks sign-ins from unmanaged devices, and alerts fire when someone creates a forwarding rule. The control that actually stops the loss is a process, though: any change to payment instructions gets confirmed by phone at a number already on file, and we help you write that rule down and train staff on it.

Evidence for insurers, clients and regulators

Security in Boston increasingly has an audience. Cyber insurers ask at renewal whether MFA covers every account, whether endpoints have managed detection and whether backups are offline or immutable. Corporate clients send vendor questionnaires, and SEC-registered advisers now answer to the amended Regulation S-P, whose compliance date for smaller entities was June 3, 2026. We build controls with that audience in mind. Each month you receive reports on MFA coverage, ThreatDown alerts and how they were resolved, Rapid7 scan results with remediation dates, training completion and backup restore tests. When a questionnaire arrives, the answers point to records rather than intentions, and when an incident happens, the timeline is already being written for counsel and the insurer.

What is included

Cybersecurity in Boston: 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 Boston client.

What cybersecurity costs in Boston

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 Boston: FAQs

How does cybersecurity work for Boston organizations?

All of it runs remotely. ThreatDown analysts watch endpoint activity around the clock and can isolate a device the moment a threat is confirmed, while our engineers handle the response: resetting credentials, revoking sessions, cleaning mail rules and restoring files. 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. NetSys does not send staff to Boston offices, so physical evidence, such as a laptop your counsel wants preserved, is shipped to us or held by your team under our instructions.

What is managed detection and response, and does a small Boston firm need it?

MDR pairs an endpoint agent with people who act on what it sees. Traditional antivirus blocks known bad files; MDR also watches behavior, such as a legitimate admin tool suddenly encrypting a file share, and a human analyst decides within minutes whether to isolate the machine. For a 15-person Boston office that never had a security team, it is the closest thing to one on duty all night. Insurers increasingly ask for it by name on renewal forms, and that is often what settles the question.

What does Massachusetts require after a data breach?

Under M.G.L. chapter 93H, section 3, a business that owns or licenses personal information about Massachusetts residents must notify the Attorney General, the Director of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation and the affected residents as soon as practicable and without unreasonable delay. When Social Security numbers are involved, section 3A requires at least 18 months of free credit monitoring. A company that only maintains data for someone else must tell the owner. We preserve logs, build the timeline and document what was accessed so your counsel can make those calls. This is general information, not legal advice.

Can we test our defenses before committing?

Yes. The one free offer we make is an external penetration test: a remote test of what your Boston office exposes to the internet, such as the firewall, VPN, mail gateway and any published applications, within a scope agreed in writing first. You receive a ranked report of what an outside attacker could find and reach. It does not look inside your network or settle compliance questions; internal testing and remediation are separate, quoted work. Many companies use the report to decide where the first month of security work should go.

How fast can you contain an incident?

Containment usually starts within minutes, because it never waits for anyone to travel. When ThreatDown confirms malicious behavior, the device is isolated from the network automatically or by an analyst, and our engineers disable the affected accounts, revoke sign-in tokens and block the sender or domain involved. A critical issue gets a call back within ten minutes and an engineer working on it remotely within thirty. Over the past three years we have handled more than 30 ransomware incidents and fully recovered every one, and clients with a disaster recovery plan in place were back within 24 hours.

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