Cybersecurity Services in Fort Lauderdale, FL
In September 2023 the City of Fort Lauderdale wired about $1.2 million to criminals posing as a contractor. Law firms, title agents, yacht brokers and medical offices here move money and confidential files every day, and the same tricks work on them. NetSys provides cybersecurity services that stop the email, catch the intruder and keep a clean backup, all delivered remotely.
The short answer
NetSys provides cybersecurity services in Fort Lauderdale, FL, built around the attacks local offices actually face: Barracuda filtering with impersonation defense and DMARC against payment fraud, multifactor sign-in under Entra ID Conditional Access against stolen passwords, ThreatDown detection and response plus Defender for Business against malware, Rapid7 scanning, KnowBe4 training, Keeper for shared passwords and immutable backups for the worst day. Monitoring and emergency response run 24/7. Every part is delivered remotely; NetSys does not send staff on site in Fort Lauderdale. Pricing is per user per month after an assessment, and the free external penetration test is a sensible first step.
Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.
How cybersecurity services are delivered in Fort Lauderdale
The tools that protect a Las Olas law office or a Cypress Creek title agency live in the cloud or on the device, so they are run from Brooklyn without anyone traveling. ThreatDown reports each detection to analysts and to our engineers; risky sign-ins, new mailbox rules and admin changes in Microsoft 365 raise alerts; and the firewall's threat logs feed the same view. When something is wrong, response is remote as well: a laptop is cut off from the network with one action, a compromised account is disabled and its sessions revoked, and a clean backup is identified before anything is restored. NetSys does not send responders to Fort Lauderdale. Our incident plan gives your office manager a one-page list of what to do while we work, starting with what not to touch. 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.
The $1.2 million email the city paid
On September 14, 2023, a City of Fort Lauderdale employee paid about $1.2 million to criminals impersonating Moss Construction, the contractor building the new police headquarters. The request came with convincing paperwork, including what looked like a blank check from the company, and city police later recovered the money. Most private firms would not get it back. The scheme needs no malware, so antivirus cannot stop it; procedure and email controls can. We set Barracuda to flag look-alike domains and display-name impersonation, publish DMARC so criminals have a harder time sending as your domain, and alert on new forwarding rules that hide a vendor's real replies. Then we help you adopt the rule that defeats this scheme: any change to a payee's bank details is confirmed by phone, to a number already on file, by someone other than the person who received the request.
Third-party access and the Broward Health breach
Attackers often come in through someone else's door. Broward Health reported that an intruder entered its network on October 15, 2021 through the office of a third-party medical provider that was allowed to access the system, and the breach filing later submitted in Maine counted 1,357,879 people. A smaller Fort Lauderdale business has the same exposure through its IT vendors, software support contractors, billing company and the landlord's building systems. We list every outside party with access, give each its own account with multifactor authentication, limit what it can reach, and switch remote-support tools off when they are not in use. Vendor sign-ins appear in the monthly security report. A connection that cannot meet those terms is moved behind a separate network segment, so a compromise there stays there.
Security for law, title, marine and medical offices
Fort Lauderdale's professional offices carry specific obligations. Florida lawyers must complete at least three hours of approved technology CLE in each three-year cycle, and the comment to Bar Rule 4-1.1 ties competence to understanding technology's risks, which is one reason firms near the Broward County Judicial Complex on SE 6th Street ask for a written security program. Title and escrow agents handle wire instructions on every closing, which makes them obvious targets. Yacht brokers and charter firms exchange deposits and passport scans with buyers worldwide, especially during the fall boat show at Bahia Mar, Pier 66 and the Las Olas Marina. Medical and dental practices answer to the HIPAA Security Rule's risk analysis. Each gets the same baseline plus controls and evidence matched to its rules, and every business holding Floridians' personal data falls under section 501.171.
Answering the cyber insurance questionnaire
Renewal questionnaires from cyber insurers now read like security audits: multifactor on email and remote access, endpoint detection and response, offline or immutable backups, privileged accounts separated from daily logins, security training, a patching cadence and an incident response plan. A Fort Lauderdale firm that answers yes without evidence risks a disputed claim later. We map each question to a control that is actually running, collect the screenshots and reports that prove it, and fix what is missing before the application goes in. ThreatDown, Conditional Access, immutable Datto or Veeam copies, KnowBe4 completion records and NinjaOne patch reports cover most of the list. The same evidence answers a client's vendor-security questionnaire and a bank's due-diligence request, so the work is done once and reused.
Cybersecurity in Fort Lauderdale: 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
Law office: layered security on Microsoft 365 with cloud-to-cloud backup
A 25-attorney firm needed client confidences protected better than a closet server could manage. Alongside a Microsoft 365 migration, NetSys layered anti-phishing and email threat protection, DNS filtering, multifactor authentication on every account and endpoint protection across attorney devices in the office and remote, and established independent cloud-to-cloud backup of the entire tenant because the recycle bin is not a backup strategy for privileged material. The firm reported 82% fewer IT support incidents per month within two quarters.
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 TrainingIT 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 Fort Lauderdale client.
What cybersecurity costs in Fort Lauderdale
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.
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.
Read next
Industry pages: IT for Legal · 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 Fort Lauderdale: IT Support · Managed IT Services · IT Consulting
Cybersecurity elsewhere: Tampa · Florida · Boca Raton · Jacksonville · Miami · Orlando
Related services: Penetration Testing · Cyber Insurance Readiness · Security Assessments · Managed Detection & Response (MDR)
Cybersecurity in Fort Lauderdale: FAQs
How does cybersecurity work for Fort Lauderdale organizations?
As a remote managed service. Detection agents, email filtering, sign-in policies and backups are run from our Brooklyn office, monitoring and emergency response continue 24/7, and staff questions go to a help desk staffed from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern every day. A confirmed incident goes straight to your dedicated engineer. NetSys does not send staff to Fort Lauderdale, so the incident plan we write with you relies on remote containment and gives your team a short checklist for the few physical steps.
What does IT security for a Fort Lauderdale office include?
For a typical office of 10 to 50 people: ThreatDown on every computer and server, Defender for Business, multifactor authentication and Conditional Access on every account, Barracuda filtering for inbound mail, DMARC, SPF and DKIM on your domain, Keeper for passwords, KnowBe4 training with simulated phishing, Cisco Meraki or Fortinet firewall management, monthly patching, Rapid7 scans and immutable backups tested by restore. Regulated firms add written policies, vendor-access controls and evidence packs for audits and insurers.
Do you offer managed security services without taking over all of our IT?
Yes. Many Fort Lauderdale firms keep an internal IT person or a long-standing vendor for day-to-day support and hand us security: monitoring, detection and response, email protection, vulnerability management and the evidence for audits and insurers. The split is written down so nobody assumes the other side is watching. We can also provide a virtual CISO who sets the program, reports to the partners or the board each quarter and coordinates with your counsel during an incident.
How should we verify a request to change a vendor's bank details?
Never by replying to the email or calling a number printed in it. Call the vendor on a number already in your records, speak to someone you know, and have a second person in your office approve the change before any payment goes out. Hold the first payment to new bank details for a day. On the technical side, we flag look-alike domains and impersonation in Barracuda and alert when a mailbox rule starts hiding replies. Write the rule into your accounts-payable procedure and train staff on it every year.
How much do cybersecurity services cost in Fort Lauderdale?
Pricing is per user per month after an assessment, and we do not publish rates. The figure depends on users and devices, servers and cloud systems in scope, the monitoring depth you need, the compliance evidence your regulators or insurers ask for and the clean-up the assessment finds. Penetration tests beyond the free external test and incident response retainers are quoted separately. The free external test shows what an attacker can see of your internet-facing systems, and the agreement runs month to month.
Which Florida rules apply after a breach in Fort Lauderdale?
Under section 501.171, a business must notify affected Floridians no later than 30 days after determining a breach or having reason to believe one occurred, with up to 15 more days if it shows good cause to the state in writing. The state's Department of Legal Affairs needs its own notice when 500 or more Floridians are affected, and the credit reporting agencies when more than 1,000 people are notified at once. A vendor holding your data must tell you within 10 days. Late notice can bring civil penalties of up to $500,000 per breach. This is general information, not legal advice.
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.