Cybersecurity · Philadelphia

Cybersecurity Services in Philadelphia: Detection, Identity and Email Protection

Since 2023 Philadelphia has watched intruders get into the city's email system, the Inquirer's publishing systems and the state Attorney General's network. NetSys protects small and mid-sized firms against the same attacks with managed detection and response, locked-down Microsoft 365 identities, email filtering, vulnerability scanning and backups that survive ransomware, all run remotely from Brooklyn.

All IT services in Philadelphia

The short answer

NetSys provides cybersecurity services to Philadelphia businesses: ThreatDown managed detection and response on every computer and server, multifactor authentication and Conditional Access across Microsoft 365, Barracuda email protection, Rapid7 vulnerability scanning, KnowBe4 security awareness training and immutable backups with tested restores. Engineers act on alerts around the clock and can isolate a device or lock an account from the console without anyone traveling. The service is remote and cloud-based, with no NetSys engineers sent to Philadelphia offices. Most engagements start with the free external penetration test, and ongoing protection is priced per user per month on month-to-month terms.

Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.

How cybersecurity is delivered in Philadelphia

Security is the part of IT that suffers least from distance, because attacks arrive over the network and are stopped there. NetSys protects Philadelphia organizations entirely remotely and does not send engineers on site. ThreatDown agents report every endpoint to an operations team that watches around the clock; when one flags ransomware behavior, the machine can be cut off from the network and the user's sessions revoked from the console. Microsoft 365 sign-ins are filtered by Conditional Access, email passes through Barracuda before it reaches inboxes, and Rapid7 scans the network and internet-facing systems on a schedule. Firewalls are managed through the Meraki or Fortinet cloud. Anything physical, such as replacing a compromised device, is handled by shipping a clean, configured one to your office or the employee's home. 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.

Philadelphia's recent breaches and the controls they point to

Three Philadelphia institutions show the pattern. From late May to late July 2023, an unauthorized party had access to City of Philadelphia email accounts, and the city later counted 35,881 people whose data, including medical and Social Security information in some cases, may have been exposed. In May 2023 a cyberattack kept the Philadelphia Inquirer from printing its regular Sunday edition and closed its newsroom; the following April it notified 25,549 people of exposed personal and financial data. In August 2025 an encryption attack took down the state Attorney General's email, phones and website, and a Philadelphia judge suspended civil trial litigation involving the office into September. The controls these point to are not exotic: phishing-resistant sign-in, monitoring of mailbox access and forwarding rules, endpoint detection with someone acting on it, and backups an attacker cannot reach.

Identity and email: where most attacks on small firms start

For a small firm the likeliest attack is a stolen Microsoft 365 password followed by a forged invoice or a quiet mailbox rule. We close that path in layers. Every account gets multifactor authentication, with authenticator apps or passkeys instead of text messages, and Conditional Access blocks sign-ins from unmanaged devices or unexpected countries. Legacy authentication is switched off. Barracuda filters inbound mail for impersonation and malicious links, and SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set on your domain so spoofing of your name is reduced. Alerts fire on new inbox forwarding rules, impossible-travel sign-ins and bulk downloads. KnowBe4 training and simulated phishing run every month, with results reported by department, so the people who pay invoices and approve wires practice spotting a fake. Any change to a vendor's payment details is confirmed by phone, every time.

Endpoints, scanning and backups that survive ransomware

Ransomware succeeds when it can run, spread and destroy the backups. ThreatDown MDR stops the first step on every Windows and Mac computer and server, with an engineer reviewing what the software flags rather than forwarding it to you. Rapid7 InsightVM scans for missing patches and exposed services, and each scan becomes a ranked fix list that our patching works through. Networks are segmented so a compromised laptop in a Center City office cannot reach the accounting server, the guest Wi-Fi or a lab instrument computer. Backups run on Datto or Veeam with an immutable copy that cannot be altered or deleted for a set period, plus independent Microsoft 365 backup, and restores are tested and logged. In the more than 30 ransomware incidents NetSys has handled over three years, every client fully recovered, and those with a recovery plan were back within 24 hours.

Pennsylvania rules for law firms, practices and insurers

Philadelphia's mix of firms brings a mix of obligations. Pennsylvania Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6(d) requires lawyers to make reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access to client information, and legal services is the county's eighth-largest industry by employment. Medical practices and health-system affiliates follow the HIPAA Security Rule's risk analysis, access control and audit requirements. Insurance licensees, a large group here with Independence Blue Cross among the top employers, fall under Pennsylvania's Insurance Data Security Act, which gives licensees five business days after determining that certain cybersecurity events occurred to tell the Insurance Commissioner. Every business holding residents' data is covered by the breach notification law and its 2024 amendments in Act 33. Our service produces the evidence those rules ask for: access reports, endpoint coverage, scan results and dated restore tests. This is general information, not legal advice.

What is included

Cybersecurity in Philadelphia: 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

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.

Read the full case study (25 attorneys + staff)

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 Philadelphia client.

What cybersecurity costs in Philadelphia

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 Philadelphia: FAQs

How does cybersecurity work for Philadelphia organizations?

Remotely and continuously. Detection and response run 24/7, so an alert at 3 a.m. on a Sunday is handled by an engineer who can isolate the device and disable the account from the console. Engineers on the help desk take everyday security questions, such as a suspicious email or a lost phone, between 4 a.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern. NetSys does not send engineers to Philadelphia. Onboarding is remote too: agents are deployed through your existing management tools or a short install, and Microsoft 365 controls are configured from the admin center with a change log you can review.

How much does cybersecurity cost for a Philadelphia business?

Ongoing protection is a per-user monthly fee, and a deeper assessment or a remediation project is priced on its own after scoping. The fee depends on the number of devices and identities, the servers in scope, whether you need HIPAA, legal or insurance-related evidence prepared, and how much of your existing security stack we keep. NetSys does not publish a rate. The external penetration test is free, runs remotely within an agreed scope and shows what an outsider can see before you commit to anything.

What does the free external penetration test cover?

It is a remote test of your internet-facing systems within a scope we agree in writing, such as your public IP addresses, firewall, VPN portal, email server settings and websites. An engineer looks for exposed services, weak configurations and known vulnerabilities the way an outside attacker would, using only the information available to us, and you receive a written summary ranked by risk. It does not test inside your network or your staff; internal testing, phishing simulation and remediation are scoped separately.

Can you work alongside our internal IT person or another provider?

Yes. In a co-managed arrangement your IT person or provider keeps day-to-day support, and NetSys runs the security layer: ThreatDown MDR, vulnerability management, email protection, Microsoft 365 security settings, training and incident response. The split is written into the agreement, including who patches what and who is called first, so an alert never sits between two teams. Firms often start this way when a client, insurer or auditor asks for security evidence their current setup cannot produce.

What should we do in the first hour of a suspected breach?

Call the help desk or your dedicated engineer, and leave machines powered on; disconnect them from the network instead if you can. We isolate affected devices through ThreatDown, disable compromised accounts, preserve logs and start a timeline of what happened and when. Your cyber insurer usually needs to hear early and may appoint breach counsel and forensics, so its hotline belongs in your written incident response plan. Notification decisions belong to you and your counsel; our job is to give them accurate facts quickly.

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