Cybersecurity Services in Seattle, WA
In 2024 ransomware shut down the Seattle Public Library's systems in May and struck the Port of Seattle in August. Smaller Seattle firms face the same crews with far fewer people to respond. NetSys gives them managed detection and response, identity and email security and a tested recovery plan, run remotely from Brooklyn.
The short answer
NetSys provides cybersecurity services to Seattle organizations: ThreatDown managed detection and response, Microsoft Defender for Business, multifactor sign-in and Conditional Access in Entra ID, Barracuda email protection, Rapid7 vulnerability scanning, KnowBe4 training, Keeper password management and immutable Datto or Veeam backups. Everything is delivered remotely and through the cloud; NetSys has no Seattle office and does not send engineers on site. Monitoring and emergency response run 24/7, and the help desk is staffed from 1 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific. Pricing is per user per month, and the free external penetration test is a remote test within an agreed scope.
Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.
How cybersecurity is delivered to Seattle organizations
Detection starts on the device. ThreatDown agents on each laptop and server send behavior to a monitoring team, and an alert that looks like ransomware staging, credential theft or a rogue remote-access tool reaches an engineer who can isolate the machine, kill the process and lock the account from Brooklyn. Entra ID sign-in logs show impossible travel and token theft; Barracuda quarantines the phishing message before most people see it. NetSys does not send responders on site in Seattle, and in practice nearly all modern incident work happens in consoles anyway. When a device has to be rebuilt, a replacement ships enrolled in Autopilot while the original is kept for forensics. Your dedicated engineer coordinates with your insurer, counsel and, where needed, law enforcement. 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 (1 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific), seven days a week. The proposal states severe-incident escalation, authorized remediation and any other after-hours work.
What the Port of Seattle and library attacks show
The Port of Seattle said the Rhysida group was behind the August 2024 attack that disrupted Sea-Tac systems, that it stopped the intrusion on August 24, refused to pay and later notified about 90,000 people, mostly about data held in older systems for employees, contractors and parking. The Seattle Public Library found ransomware on May 25, 2024 and took public computers, the catalog and building Wi-Fi offline for weeks. Two lessons carry over to a 25-person firm. Old systems keep old personal data long after anyone remembers it, so we find and retire them or wall them off. And recovery takes longer than people expect, so backups have to be immutable, stored apart from the network and restored on a schedule, not only when the crisis arrives.
Tech, life sciences, maritime and aerospace: different data, different controls
Seattle's mix of industries means one security template does not fit. Software firms in South Lake Union need admin accounts kept separate from daily ones and source code reachable only from compliant devices. Research groups near the Fred Hutchinson campus hold patient and grant data; the Attorney General counted Fred Hutch among two breaches in 2024 that each reached more than a million Washingtonians. Maritime and logistics firms around Fishermen's Terminal, Interbay and the Harbor Island container terminals depend on email with shippers and brokers, where a spoofed invoice is the common attack. Aerospace suppliers handling controlled unclassified information still answer to DFARS 252.204-7012 and NIST SP 800-171 Revision 2, with Level 1 and Level 2 self-assessments and a current SPRS score in force even though CMMC Phase 2 was suspended on July 13, 2026.
Washington breach numbers and notice duties
The Attorney General's 2024 data breach report, covering mid-2023 to mid-2024, counted 279 breaches affecting at least 500 Washingtonians and just over 11.6 million notices, with cyberattacks behind 78% of breaches and ransomware behind 52% of those cyberattacks. When a breach happens, RCW 19.255.010 gives a business no more than 30 calendar days after discovery to notify affected residents, and the same 30 days to notify the Attorney General when more than 500 residents are involved. The My Health My Data Act adds consent and deletion duties for consumer health data that HIPAA does not cover, such as data from wellness apps. The practical effect for IT is evidence: sign-in logs, endpoint timelines and backup records that let counsel decide quickly. This is general information, not legal advice.
How a Seattle security engagement starts
We begin with what would hurt most. In the first week an engineer runs the free external penetration test and a Rapid7 scan, reviews your Microsoft 365 secure score and lists every account with admin rights, every mailbox forwarding mail outside the company and every device without current protection. Week two delivers a written plan ranked by risk and priced by item. Weeks three and four close the largest gaps: ThreatDown on every endpoint, phishing-resistant multifactor sign-in for admins and finance, DMARC to reduce spoofing of your domain, Keeper for shared credentials and immutable backups with a first test restore. Before day 30 we run a short tabletop exercise with your leadership: who calls whom when ransomware appears at 9 p.m. on a Friday, and who approves paying for recovery.
Cybersecurity in Seattle: 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
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.
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 Seattle client.
What cybersecurity costs in Seattle
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 Professional Services & Consulting · IT for Manufacturing
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 Seattle: IT Consulting · Managed IT Services · IT Support
Cybersecurity elsewhere: Denver · Albuquerque · Bellevue, Washington · Colorado · Colorado Springs · Hawaii
Related services: Penetration Testing · Cyber Insurance Readiness · Security Assessments · Managed Detection & Response (MDR)
Cybersecurity in Seattle: FAQs
How does cybersecurity work for Seattle organizations?
From Brooklyn, through the tools on your devices and in your Microsoft 365 tenant. ThreatDown and Defender watch endpoints, Entra ID enforces sign-in rules, Barracuda filters email and Rapid7 scans for weaknesses. NetSys does not send engineers to Seattle; replacement equipment ships configured. Monitoring and emergency response run around the clock, while the staffed help desk covers 1 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific. If ransomware appears overnight, the alert goes straight to your dedicated engineer rather than waiting for business hours.
How much do cybersecurity services cost in Seattle, WA?
Security is priced per user per month after an assessment, and we do not publish a rate. Inside a managed IT agreement, the core controls are already part of the fee. As a separate service, cost depends on the number of users and endpoints, servers and cloud workloads to monitor, compliance evidence for HIPAA, NIST SP 800-171 or an insurer, and how much cleanup the first scan finds. Projects such as an incident-response plan or a Microsoft 365 hardening sprint are quoted on their own, and terms run month to month.
Can you work alongside our in-house IT staff or developers?
Yes. Many Seattle tech companies have strong engineers who would rather not run a security operation at night. In a co-managed arrangement your team keeps cloud infrastructure and daily administration, and we take endpoint detection and response, monitoring, phishing training, vulnerability scanning and after-hours incident response. We agree who owns each alert type, who may isolate a production server and how changes are approved, and we write it down. Your staff see the same console data we do, so nobody argues about what happened.
What happens if ransomware hits our Seattle office overnight?
Monitoring sees it first, usually as mass file changes or a disabled security tool, and the affected machines are isolated before the encryption spreads further. Your dedicated engineer is called, not emailed, and starts the recovery plan: contain, preserve evidence, notify your insurer, restore clean systems from immutable backups. NetSys has handled more than 30 ransomware incidents in three years and every one was fully recovered; clients with a disaster recovery plan already in place were working again within 24 hours.
Which cybersecurity requirements apply to businesses in Seattle, WA?
It depends on the data you hold. Every business handling Washington residents' personal information is subject to RCW 19.255.010's breach notice rules. Medical practices and their vendors follow the HIPAA Security Rule. Investment advisers and broker-dealers answer to SEC Regulation S-P as amended in 2024, law firms to ABA Model Rule 1.6(c) on safeguarding client information, and defense suppliers to DFARS 252.204-7012 and NIST SP 800-171. Businesses collecting consumer health data outside HIPAA fall under the My Health My Data Act. We map which rules apply during the first week.
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.