Cybersecurity Services in Boston
NetSys provides cybersecurity services to businesses in Boston: 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. Boston is about four hours from Brooklyn, so day-to-day work is remote and on-site visits are planned rather than dispatched same-day. Monitoring, help desk and remediation run remotely around the clock from Brooklyn. 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 Boston: 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, 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 Boston
Boston is about four hours from Brooklyn, so day-to-day work is remote and on-site visits are planned rather than dispatched same-day. Monitoring, help desk and remediation run remotely around the clock from Brooklyn. 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. Seaport and Kendall labs have fiber choice, but Back Bay brownstones and older Financial District towers share risers and often have one carrier, and lab buildings put instrument networks next to office networks, so segmentation is designed before anything else. The carriers we see most in Boston are Comcast Business, Verizon Fios and Crown Castle fiber, and the failover design starts with which of them actually reach your building.
Who cybersecurity in Boston is built for
Most of our Boston work sits in the Seaport, Back Bay, Kendall Square, the Financial District and Route 128: biotech and life-sciences companies on Benchling, financial and asset-management firms on Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, law firms on iManage, medical practices on Epic, consulting and professional firms on Deltek, and universities' affiliates and nonprofits on Blackbaud. 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 Boston
Two things shape the continuity design here. First, the weather and the grid: nor'easters and winter power outages are the recurring risk, so UPS runtime, cellular failover and off-site backups are part of every design. Second, the attacks that actually land locally are ordinary ones, and the public record shows how they go: the April 2023 ransomware attack on Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, disclosed by Point32Health, which took systems offline for weeks and exposed member data. The controls in the next section are the ones that would have changed those stories.
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
- 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 30-person financial or asset-management firm in the Seaport
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 30-person financial and asset-management firms in the Seaport whose Microsoft 365 tenant was set up years ago and never hardened, running Salesforce Financial Services Cloud and moving money by wire every week. Ransomware hit a competitor two blocks away and the owner wants to know if it could happen here. Nobody can say whether a mailbox was compromised or the sender was spoofed, the antivirus came bundled with the laptops, and the firewall the last provider installed has a vendor port open that nobody remembers approving.
- 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
The insurer's questions get answered with evidence instead of assurances, wire instructions have a verification step that does not depend on memory, and an engineer is watching the tenant at night. The business gets one person to call. The agreement stays month to month.
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 Boston: 201 CMR 17.00 and what sits on top of it
If you hold personal information on a resident of Massachusetts, Massachusetts 201 CMR 17.00 requires every business that holds personal information on a Massachusetts resident to maintain a written information security program (a WISP) with named responsibility, access controls, encryption of data in transit and on portable devices, monitoring and employee training. M.G.L. c. 93H adds the breach-notification duty, with notice to the Attorney General and the Office of Consumer Affairs. Biotech and life-sciences firms add FDA and partner audit expectations, healthcare adds HIPAA, and financial firms add SEC and FINRA. 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 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, 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 Life Sciences & Biotech · IT for Financial Services
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 Boston: Managed IT Services · IT Consulting · IT Support
Cybersecurity elsewhere: New York City · Brooklyn, NY · Nassau County, NY · Suffolk County, NY · Westchester County, NY · Stamford, CT
Related services: Penetration Testing · Cyber Insurance Readiness · Security Assessments · Managed Detection & Response (MDR)
Cybersecurity in Boston: 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 Boston 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 Boston?
Our office is in Brooklyn, NY. Boston is about four hours from Brooklyn, so day-to-day work is remote and on-site visits are planned rather than dispatched same-day. 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 and any travel in writing, and the agreement runs month to month.
What is a WISP and do we need one in Massachusetts?
A written information security program is what 201 CMR 17.00 requires of any business holding personal information on a Massachusetts resident. It names who owns security, describes access controls, encryption, monitoring and training, and is the first thing the Attorney General asks for after a breach. NetSys writes and maintains it as part of onboarding.
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.