Cybersecurity Services in Chicago
NetSys provides cybersecurity services to businesses in Chicago: 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. Chicago 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 Chicago: 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 Chicago
Chicago 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. Loop and River North towers have carrier choice, but West Loop conversions and suburban office parks often run on one Comcast circuit, and the city's biometric timeclocks bring BIPA into scope, so the inventory on the first visit covers more than computers. The carriers we see most in Chicago are Comcast Business, AT&T Business Fiber and Crown Castle fiber, and the failover design starts with which of them actually reach your building.
Who cybersecurity in Chicago is built for
Most of our Chicago work sits in the Loop, River North, the West Loop, Schaumburg and Naperville: trading and financial firms on Bloomberg Terminal, law firms on iManage, medical practices on Epic, manufacturers on Plex, logistics and freight firms on Descartes, and consulting and professional firms on Deltek. 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 Chicago
Two things shape the continuity design here. First, the weather and the grid: winter storms and summer derecho power outages are the recurring risk, so UPS runtime, cellular failover and off-site backups are standard. Second, the attacks that actually land locally are ordinary ones, and the public record shows how they go: the January 2024 ransomware attack on Lurie Children's Hospital, which took clinical systems offline for weeks and was later claimed by the Rhysida group. The controls in the next section are the ones that would have changed those stories.
Cybersecurity in Chicago: what NetSys delivers
Detection and response
- ThreatDown managed detection and response with EDR agents on every workstation, laptop and server, monitored 24/7
- Microsoft Defender for Business and Rapid7 InsightIDR telemetry from identities, email and endpoints, with a person acting on alerts
- Isolation of a compromised device in real time, with an engineer on the case rather than a ticket in a queue
- Incident investigation and a written timeline for leadership, counsel and your insurer
Identity and email
- Entra ID Conditional Access and multifactor authentication across Microsoft 365, with legacy authentication switched off
- Privileged access and privileged identity management so admin rights are granted just in time and removed afterwards
- Barracuda Email Protection in front of every mailbox, with SPF, DKIM and DMARC enforced
- KnowBe4 security awareness training with simulated phishing built from the lures your industry receives
Exposure and recovery
- Rapid7 InsightVM vulnerability scanning on a schedule, with findings fixed rather than filed
- Cisco Meraki or Fortinet firewall management, segmentation and DNS filtering on office and remote devices
- Immutable backups through Datto SIRIS or Veeam, with restores tested and documented
- The free remote external penetration test, limited to available information and the external scope agreed with you
A 22-person medical practice in Schaumburg
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 22-seat medical practices in Schaumburg that handles regulated data in Epic across the office and remote staff on home Wi-Fi. The tenant has five permanent Global Administrators and nobody can say why. Email protection is whatever Microsoft ships by default, DMARC was never set up, the Crown Castle fiber firewall is a consumer router, and the last security training anyone remembers was a poster.
- Free remote external penetration test limited to information available to NetSys and the external scope agreed with the business; internal review and remediation scoped separately
- ThreatDown MDR and EDR deployed to every workstation, laptop and server, including the ones partners use from home, with the console monitored 24/7
- Rapid7 InsightVM deployed for scheduled vulnerability scanning, with the first month's findings prioritized and closed
- Cisco Meraki firewall installed with intrusion prevention, geo-blocking, segmentation between finance, servers, printers and guests, and DNS filtering on every device
- KnowBe4 rolled out with a baseline phishing test in week one and training on a recurring schedule, aimed at the lures the industry actually receives
- Rapid7 InsightIDR collecting identity, email, endpoint and firewall logs so an intrusion is visible in one console
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 Chicago: PIPA and what sits on top of it
If you hold personal information on a resident of Illinois, the Illinois Personal Information Protection Act (815 ILCS 530) requires reasonable security measures and notice to affected residents in the most expedient time possible after a breach, with notice to the Attorney General when more than 500 residents are affected. The Biometric Information Privacy Act (740 ILCS 14) separately governs fingerprint and facial timeclocks and door systems, and it carries a private right of action that has produced some of the largest privacy settlements in the country. Healthcare adds HIPAA, financial and trading firms add SEC, FINRA and CFTC expectations, and manufacturers face customer audits. 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 Chicago
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 Financial Services · IT for Legal
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 Chicago: 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 Chicago: FAQs
What does the free external penetration test include?
The free offer is a remote external penetration test, limited to the information available to NetSys and the external scope agreed with you. It examines what your business shows the internet and reports the findings with their scope and limitations stated. Reviews of tenant settings, devices, internal networks or backups need a separate scope.
Will cybersecurity services help us pass a cyber insurance questionnaire?
Yes. Multifactor authentication, endpoint detection and response, tested offline backups and security awareness training are the four controls almost every questionnaire asks about, and the service produces the evidence for each. Our cyber insurance readiness page lists what carriers are asking for in 2026.
What happens if we are breached?
The MDR team isolates the affected device, an engineer investigates and a written timeline goes to leadership, your counsel and your insurer. The incident response plan we write during onboarding names who does what, so the first hour is not spent deciding.
Do you have an office in Chicago?
Our office is in Brooklyn, NY. Chicago 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.
Does BIPA affect an ordinary Illinois business?
If you use a fingerprint or facial-recognition timeclock or door reader, yes. The Biometric Information Privacy Act requires written consent, a retention schedule and secure handling of biometric data, and it allows individuals to sue. We inventory those systems during onboarding so nobody discovers them in a complaint.
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.