Cybersecurity · Houston

Cybersecurity Services in Houston, TX

Houston's energy, port and medical economy attracts attackers who know where the money and the pressure points are, and the suppliers around the big names are often the easier way in. NetSys protects Houston businesses with managed detection and response on every device, hardened Microsoft 365 sign-ins, filtered email, regular vulnerability scans and tested backups, watched remotely around the clock.

All IT services in Houston, TX

The short answer

NetSys provides cybersecurity services to Houston organizations: ThreatDown managed detection and response, Microsoft Defender for Business, Entra ID Conditional Access with multifactor sign-in, Barracuda email protection, Rapid7 InsightVM scanning, KnowBe4 phishing training, Keeper password management and immutable Datto or Veeam backups. Monitoring and response run 24/7 from Brooklyn; NetSys does not do on-site security work in Houston, and none is needed to isolate a device or lock an account. Pricing is per user per month, and a remote external penetration test is available at no cost.

Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.

How cybersecurity is delivered for Houston businesses

The service runs on agents and cloud controls our engineers manage from Brooklyn. ThreatDown sits on every laptop and server and sends suspicious behavior to an engineer, who can isolate the device, stop the process and begin recovery remotely, whether the laptop is in a Galleria office or a truck in Baytown. Entra ID sign-in logs flag logins from unexpected countries and repeated multifactor prompts, and the engineer can revoke sessions and force a password reset. Barracuda filters inbound mail, Rapid7 scans run on a schedule, and every finding becomes a dated patching ticket. Nobody from NetSys works in Houston, so the physical steps of an incident are agreed in advance: who pulls a network cable if asked, who can authorize shutting down a server, and where a clean spare laptop is kept. 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 (3 a.m. to 10 p.m. Central), seven days a week. The proposal states severe-incident escalation, authorized remediation and any other after-hours work.

What the Halliburton attack showed Houston's supply chain

On August 21, 2024, Halliburton, the oilfield services company headquartered in Houston, learned that an unauthorized party had accessed its systems. It took some systems offline as a precaution, later told the SEC that data had been exfiltrated, and put the direct cost at about $35 million; the RansomHub group claimed the attack. For the smaller Houston firms that sell to companies like Halliburton, the lesson is twofold. Your customer may cut its connections to you during an incident, so invoices, portals and shared files stop working until it is over. And attackers use suppliers as a route in, so a vendor with a weak mailbox becomes the problem. The controls that matter are the plain ones: multifactor sign-in on every account, monitored endpoints and fast isolation.

Invoice fraud in energy-sector payables

Houston's energy economy runs on purchase orders, field tickets, joint-interest billing and large wire payments between operators, contractors and suppliers. That makes business email compromise a costly threat for every firm in the chain. An attacker phishes one mailbox, reads weeks of correspondence, then sends revised bank details for a real invoice from a real contact. The controls are layered. Barracuda flags impersonation and lookalike domains, DMARC on your own domain makes it harder for criminals to send as you, and an alert fires when any mailbox creates a forwarding or deletion rule. KnowBe4 training uses examples built on invoices and payment changes. The rule that stops the loss is procedural: any change in payment details is confirmed by phone at a number already on file, never one supplied in the email.

Ransomware readiness for a Houston business

NetSys has handled more than 30 ransomware incidents in the past three years, and every one was fully recovered; clients that already had a disaster recovery plan were working again within 24 hours. Readiness is what makes that possible. Backups are immutable and stored away from the network they protect, the backup console has its own multifactor sign-in and separate credentials, and test restores are run on a schedule and reported to you. Administrator accounts are separate from everyday accounts, so a phished user cannot encrypt a server. A written incident plan lists who calls the cyber insurer, who speaks to clients and who decides on shutting down systems. When an incident starts, your dedicated engineer isolates affected devices, preserves the evidence the insurer's forensic team will want and restores in the order the plan sets.

Texas breach deadlines and the SB 2610 safe harbor

If sensitive personal information is breached, Texas Business and Commerce Code 521.053 requires a business to notify affected individuals without unreasonable delay and no later than 60 days after determining the breach occurred, and to notify the Attorney General through the office's online form within 30 days when 250 or more Texans are involved. Senate Bill 2610, in force since September 1, 2025, gives a business with fewer than 250 employees a defense against exemplary damages if it is sued after a breach and can show a qualifying cybersecurity program was in place when the breach happened. The requirements scale with size, from password policies and training for the smallest firms to a full framework such as NIST CSF or ISO/IEC 27001 for those near 250. The service documents the program you would need to show. This is general information, not legal advice.

What is included

Cybersecurity in Houston: 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

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

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

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 Houston client.

What cybersecurity costs in Houston

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 Houston: FAQs

How does cybersecurity work for Houston organizations?

It is a monitored service delivered remotely. ThreatDown, Defender, Entra ID and Barracuda send alerts around the clock to engineers in Brooklyn, who can isolate devices, lock accounts and start recovery without traveling. The help desk takes suspicious-email reports and access questions from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. Central every day, and a serious incident reaches your dedicated engineer whatever the hour. No NetSys engineer works in Houston or travels there. The agreement is month to month.

What do cybersecurity services in Houston cost?

You pay a monthly amount per user for the ongoing protection, and any assessment or cleanup project is quoted on top. The number of devices and identities, the evidence your clients or insurer require, and whether you already license Microsoft 365 Business Premium, which includes Conditional Access and Intune, decide most of the price. A fabricator documenting NIST SP 800-171 for a defense prime needs more reporting than a small professional office. We do not publish a price; you receive a written quote after scoping.

What does the external penetration test cover, and what does it cost?

Nothing. It is the only service NetSys offers free. The test is run remotely against an external scope we agree in writing, usually your public IP range, the firewall and VPN, mail and remote-access endpoints, plus any web application you name. You get a ranked list of what an outside attacker could discover and touch, with the boundaries of the test spelled out. It does not cover your internal network, Microsoft 365 settings, devices or backups; those need a separately scoped assessment.

Do you handle a ransomware incident if one happens?

Yes. Severe incidents go straight to your dedicated engineer, who isolates affected devices through ThreatDown, disables compromised accounts, preserves logs and works with your cyber insurer's incident response firm if one is assigned. Recovery follows the order in your plan: identity first, then email, files and the line-of-business systems. Clients with a disaster recovery plan in place have been back within 24 hours. Decisions about notifying customers, regulators or law enforcement stay with your leadership and counsel; we supply the facts.

Do we need a security assessment before signing up?

Not necessarily. Many engagements start with the free external penetration test and move straight to onboarding, which itself closes the most common gaps. A deeper review of your Microsoft 365 tenant, devices, internal network and backups is quoted on its own and is worth doing when a client, insurer or prime contractor wants a documented baseline. Its findings become a prioritized fix list with dates, and that list becomes the first 90 days of the service.

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