Managed IT Services · Providence

Managed IT Services in Providence

NetSys is an IT company for businesses in Providence: we run the help desk, security, backups, Microsoft 365 and the network for a flat monthly fee per user. We have run IT out of New York since 1998, and our engineers hold degrees in electrical and computer engineering.

The short answer

NetSys provides managed IT to businesses in Providence: help desk with engineers on the line, 24/7 monitoring, patching, ThreatDown managed detection and response, Microsoft 365 and Intune administration, tested backups and vendor management, for a flat monthly fee per user. Delivery is remote-first from Brooklyn, with the help desk staffed seven days a week from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time and emergency service 24/7. On-site commitments are arranged in advance and sized to the engagement, including a nearby dedicated engineer where regular presence and availability have been confirmed. Ongoing agreements run month to month.

Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.

How managed IT is delivered in Providence

Providence is served from Brooklyn, in the same Eastern time zone and a little over three hours away by road, so day-to-day work is remote and on-site visits are planned rather than dispatched same-day. 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. On-site commitments outside our on-site coverage (New York City, Long Island, Westchester, the Hudson Valley, North Jersey and Fairfield County, CT) 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 a standing on-site day or two each week, can include a dedicated engineer with a drive time generally under an hour once availability, location and the visit schedule are confirmed in the proposal. Hardware can ship pre-configured where the project permits remote setup. Confirm landlord access, circuit diversity, cabling and equipment space before approving a network change. Carrier options to check in Providence include Verizon Fios and Spectrum Business (formerly Cox Business); availability, routing and installation dates must be verified at your address before a failover design is approved.

Who managed IT in Providence is built for

Businesses we can support in and around Downtown Providence, the Jewelry District, College Hill, East Providence and Pawtucket include universities' affiliates and nonprofits on Blackbaud, banks and investment firms on Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, insurance carriers and agencies on Applied Epic, medical practices and outpatient centers on athenahealth, jewelry and silverware manufacturers on SAP Business One, and law firms on Clio. These are examples of business and application needs, not a list of local clients. We coordinate infrastructure, identity and integration with the application vendor, and identify any compliance requirements during discovery. Companies with an internal IT person can agree a split of responsibilities, systems and coverage hours before work begins.

Continuity planning for your Providence business

Start with the systems your team cannot work without. Record the impact of a building power outage, a failed internet circuit, a compromised account and an unavailable application vendor. Then agree recovery priorities, an independent access path, protected backup copies and a test for each critical workflow. Controls reduce particular risks; they do not guarantee that an incident cannot happen.

What is included

Managed IT Services in Providence: what NetSys delivers

Support that answers

  • Help desk by phone, email and Teams with engineers on the line, an immediate response from your dedicated engineer when something severe happens, and everything else worked by severity
  • Remote monitoring and management through NinjaOne on every endpoint and server, 24 hours a day
  • Patch management on the maintenance schedule agreed with you, weekly or quarterly as the business prefers, with urgent fixes applied as needed and a report showing what was patched where
  • Onboarding and offboarding checklists for every hire and departure, covering accounts, devices, access and the return of hardware

The security stack, included

  • ThreatDown MDR and EDR on every workstation, laptop and server, monitored around the clock
  • Entra ID Conditional Access, multifactor authentication and Microsoft Defender for Business across the tenant, with legacy authentication switched off
  • Barracuda Email Protection with impersonation and link protection, plus DMARC enforcement for the domain
  • Rapid7 InsightVM vulnerability scanning on a schedule, with findings fixed rather than filed

Continuity and planning

  • Immutable backups for servers and for Microsoft 365 itself, tested by restoring real data on a schedule
  • Intune, Windows Autopilot and Keeper password management rolled out as standard, so devices and credentials stop being ad hoc
  • ISP, software and hardware vendors managed on your behalf, with one number to call
  • Quarterly reviews with a written roadmap, a budget and a list of what changed since last time
Illustrative engagement

A 35-person law firm in East Providence

This planning example shows how we could scope the work. It is not a claim about a customer in this market or a measured result. For published customer work, see our case studies.

A 35-seat law firm in East Providence that grew out of its setup: Clio plus a dozen browser tools, an Exchange Online tenant with no multifactor authentication, a Meraki firewall out of support and a Verizon Fios connection with no failover. The office manager has become the IT department by default and wants out. The owner has become the help desk and the office manager keeps the passwords in a spreadsheet.

  • Intune enrollment for every laptop and phone, with Windows Autopilot registration for new hardware and a compliance policy that gates access to email and files
  • Keeper password vault deployed so shared spreadsheets of passwords stop existing
  • A written onboarding and offboarding checklist covering accounts, devices, access and hardware return
  • Cutover in stages over three to four weeks, with the old provider's access removed at the end, planned disruption agreed in advance and rollback checks documented
  • Credentials, licenses and documentation collected from the outgoing provider, and what was actually deployed audited against what was being paid for
  • ThreatDown MDR and EDR rolled out to every endpoint, with the console monitored around the clock

One provider is accountable for devices, network, Microsoft 365 and security. Staff call a help desk that fixes things, the insurer gets answers with evidence behind them, and leadership sees a quarterly roadmap instead of surprise invoices. The agreement runs month to month.

Published case study

Complete managed IT, cybersecurity and help desk for a 20-seat organization

A 20-seat organization handed NetSys the whole of its IT. Devices, network, Microsoft 365 and vendors came under one agreement with 24/7 monitoring and a named account manager; endpoint protection, multifactor authentication, email protection and tested backups went onto all twenty seats; staff got a help desk with engineers on the other end; and every new hire now goes through a defined onboarding process with recurring phishing training. The write-up is limited to the scope delivered, with no outcome figures claimed.

Read the full case study (20 seats)

From our client work

Managed IT services work for other clients

Client names are withheld. These examples were chosen for the work involved, not for where the client is, so none is presented as a Providence client.

Compliance in Providence: the Identity Theft Protection Act and what sits on top of it

Rhode Island’s Identity Theft Protection Act of 2015 (R.I. Gen. Laws chapter 11-49.3) requires a business that handles personal information about Rhode Island residents to maintain a risk-based information security program with reasonable security procedures and practices appropriate to its size and scope, and to notify affected residents of a breach that poses a significant risk of identity theft no later than 45 calendar days after the breach is confirmed and the information needed for the notice can be ascertained. When more than 500 residents are to be notified, the Attorney General and the major credit reporting agencies must also be notified. The service scope should identify the records, access controls, retention settings and incident evidence your business needs; your legal or compliance adviser determines which requirements apply. The managed agreement can include access reviews, patch reports, backup test results and a written incident response plan, with the evidence and responsibilities agreed in the scope. Discovery identifies missing records and assigns the documentation work. Applicable duties depend on the business, data, exemptions and contracts; your legal or compliance adviser determines which requirements apply.

What managed IT costs in Providence

Managed IT is priced per user per month for a fully managed agreement, and the number moves with four things more than with headcount: how many servers you run, whether you need after-hours coverage beyond monitoring, how much compliance documentation you carry, and whether we are co-managing alongside an internal person or running everything. We quote from an assessment, not a phone call, and the agreement runs month to month. What belongs in the monthly fee versus what is billed separately is set out on our managed IT pricing page.

How the monthly fee is built

Who this fits, and who it does not

Best fit: 10 to 75 employees, one or two offices plus remote staff, already on Microsoft 365 or ready to move there, and either no internal IT or one person who is underwater.

Not a fit: businesses under five people, who are usually better served by the small-office baseline described in our five-person case study, or organizations over 250 seats, which need an internal team we can co-manage with rather than replace.

Common Questions

Managed IT Services in Providence: FAQs

Is NetSys an IT company that supports businesses in Providence?

Yes. NetSys is an IT services company that supports Providence businesses remote-first from its only office, in Brooklyn. Managed IT support, an engineer-led help desk, cybersecurity and IT consulting are available under a single agreement that runs month to month. We support Windows and Mac devices, Microsoft 365 and applications such as Blackbaud and Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, and we work with the software vendor when a problem sits on their side. To start, we assess the environment and write the scope; the cutover then runs in stages, and three to four weeks is typical for a 20-seat office.

Is support in Providence remote or on-site?

Remote-first. NetSys has one office, in Brooklyn, NY. Providence is served from Brooklyn, in the same Eastern time zone and a little over three hours away by road, so day-to-day work is remote and on-site visits are planned rather than dispatched same-day. The help desk, monitoring, security and Microsoft 365 work run remotely, with the help desk staffed seven days a week from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time and emergency service 24/7, and new hardware can ship pre-configured. Work that needs hands at an office in East Providence or Downtown Providence, such as hardware swaps, network closet work, new-hire setups and office moves, is a visit arranged in advance. How much on-site time an engagement includes is agreed before it starts: none for a mostly remote account, or a dedicated engineer where regular presence such as a standing on-site day or two each week is part of the scope. A drive time generally under an hour is an option subject to confirming engineer availability and your address. The proposal states the on-site arrangement and any travel in writing.

What does managed IT in Providence include, and how is it priced?

One per-user fee pays for the help desk, round-the-clock monitoring, patching, ThreatDown MDR, Microsoft 365 and Intune administration, restore-tested backups and vendor calls. It is priced per user per month from an assessment, and server count, after-hours coverage beyond monitoring, compliance documentation and whether an internal IT person stays on move it more than headcount does. Vendor calls for applications such as Applied Epic and athenahealth are included. Planned visits to Providence and any travel are quoted in the proposal. Hardware, licensing and projects such as migrations are quoted on their own, and our managed IT pricing page lists what the fee includes.

How quickly do you respond to a problem?

Severe problems get an immediate response from your dedicated engineer: ransomware, systems down, no internet, email that has stopped working. Everything else is worked by severity, so a request to add a printer is scheduled rather than treated as an outage. The help desk is staffed by engineers seven days a week from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time, and monitoring and emergency service run 24/7. The agreement states the severe-incident escalation path and any authorized after-hours work.

What happens to our current provider?

We run the transition. That means collecting credentials and documentation, auditing what is actually deployed against what you are paying for, and cutting over in stages. Three to four weeks is typical for a 20-seat office, with disruption and rollback plans agreed in advance; the old provider's access is removed at the end.

How can IT support help with Rhode Island data-security requirements?

Rhode Island’s Identity Theft Protection Act of 2015 (R.I. Gen. Laws chapter 11-49.3) requires a business that handles personal information about Rhode Island residents to maintain a risk-based information security program with reasonable security procedures and practices appropriate to its size and scope, and to notify affected residents of a breach that poses a significant risk of identity theft no later than 45 calendar days after the breach is confirmed and the information needed for the notice can be ascertained. When more than 500 residents are to be notified, the Attorney General and the major credit reporting agencies must also be notified. NetSys can help document the relevant systems, controls and incident evidence within an agreed scope; legal notification decisions remain with your authorized business and legal team.

One provider, month to month

Get the whole of your IT handled by one accountable team.

Tell us how many people and devices you have, what you run today and what keeps breaking. We come back with a written scope, the responsibilities on each side and a monthly figure, before you decide anything.