Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Services: an Engineer-Led Review of Your Exposure
A security problem you can name is the easy kind. The harder one is a set of assumptions nobody has ever tested. A NetSys assessment tests them: what's exposed to the internet, who can reach what inside, whether the backups actually restore, and how your staff behave when a convincing email arrives. What you get back is a prioritized findings list, an executive summary your leadership can act on, and a remediation plan. The free assessment is a remote external penetration test, limited to the information available to NetSys and the external scope we agree with you.
The short answer
A cybersecurity risk assessment reviews how exposed your business is across agreed areas, such as internet-facing systems, Microsoft 365 identity, endpoints, backups and staff, then ranks each finding by risk and effort in a prioritized remediation plan. NetSys agrees scope, access and deliverables first. The free remote external penetration test is a separate, narrower scope.
An assessment is a common way a NetSys relationship starts. Somebody wants to know where they stand before signing anything, so an engineer goes and looks, writes it down, and hands it over. What happens after that is genuinely their call.
We have spent 28+ years in business working with importers, medical practices, law firms, and financial firms, and the scope of the exercise changes with each of them. The output doesn't. You end up with a list you can act on, in priority order, in language your leadership actually understands.
This is the broader assessment practice. The free remote external penetration test has a limited scope based on available information. Internal configuration reviews, restore tests and compliance assessments are separate engagements.
A Scan Is Output. An Assessment Is Judgment.
Any tool can produce a list of missing patches and open ports. That list is close to worthless until somebody knows which server runs your ERP, which mailbox the bookkeeper shares, and what happens on a Friday afternoon when the warehouse is shipping. Our engineers run the tooling, then spend the real hours on interpretation: which findings are genuinely reachable from outside, which are theoretical, which are load-bearing for the business, and which cheap fix removes three of them at once. That's why what you get back is short and ordered rather than long and alphabetical — and why every finding carries an effort estimate next to its severity. A risk you can't schedule isn't actionable.
What We Assess, and What You Get Back
External Attack Surface
What an attacker can see and reach before they have any credentials at all.
- Internet-facing services, remote access endpoints, and open ports
- Firewall, VPN, and edge device configuration and firmware state
- Exposed administrative interfaces and forgotten legacy hosts
- Domain, DNS, and email authentication records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
- Company credentials already circulating from third-party breaches
Identity & Microsoft 365 Posture
A working login opens more doors than an exploit does. Identity is where we spend the most time.
- Multi-factor authentication coverage — including the accounts that quietly skipped it
- Conditional access policies, legacy authentication, and admin role assignment
- Mailbox forwarding rules, delegate access, and third-party OAuth app consents
- Former employees, service accounts, and shared logins that still work
- Tenant audit logging and alerting — whether anything would be noticed
Endpoint & Patch State
Every laptop is a way in. We inventory what's actually deployed, not what the asset spreadsheet claims.
- Devices with no endpoint detection agent, or an agent that stopped reporting weeks ago
- Operating system and third-party patch levels, including unsupported versions still in service
- Local administrator rights and credential reuse across machines
- Disk encryption and lock-screen policy on anything that leaves the building
- Unmanaged personal devices touching company mail and files
Backup Recoverability
A backup nobody has restored is a hypothesis. We test it instead of reading the console.
- Whether backups are genuinely offline or immutable, or reachable with the same credentials as production
- Timed restore tests against real data — files, mailboxes, and a full system
- Coverage gaps: Microsoft 365 data, line-of-business databases, cloud file shares
- Recovery time and recovery point measured against what the business can actually absorb
- Who holds the keys, and whether recovery depends on one person answering the phone
Network Segmentation & Internal Access
The real question isn't whether someone gets in. It's how far they get afterward.
- Flat networks where a warehouse scanner can reach the accounting server
- Guest Wi-Fi, cameras, IoT, and building systems sharing production VLANs
- File share and folder permissions — who can open payroll, HR, and client matter files
- Lateral movement paths from a single compromised workstation
- Vendor and remote-support access routes into the environment
User Susceptibility
The control that is a frequent weak point is a person under time pressure.
- Authorized phishing simulation against a real employee population
- Wire-transfer and vendor-bank-change procedures — the process, not just the mail filter
- Who has been trained, when, and whether behavior changed afterward
- How staff report something suspicious, and whether anyone is reading those reports
Sample Deliverables
Three artifacts, written for three different people in your building.
- Prioritized findings list — each item states what we found, how we found it, what it exposes, a severity, and an honest effort estimate: an afternoon, a weekend, or a project
- Executive summary — a plain-English read for an owner or partner who doesn't manage IT, covering the handful of findings that genuinely matter and what they put at risk
- Remediation plan — the fixes in the order we'd do them, marked by who should own each one: your staff, your existing vendor, or us
- Raw tool output attached as an appendix, so nothing is hidden — but the appendix is not the report
- A walkthrough with the engineer who did the work, so you can argue with the conclusions
- Everything is yours to keep, including if you hand it to another provider tomorrow
How It Starts and What Happens Next
The free external penetration test is the front door. Nothing after it is automatic.
- The free assessment is a remote external penetration test, limited to the information available to NetSys and the external scope we agree with you.
- If the external findings raise deeper questions, we agree a separate scope for a broader assessment
- Findings that line up with carrier questions feed straight into cyber-insurance readiness work
- Businesses that want the program owned, budgeted, and reported over time move to a vCISO engagement
- Remediation can go to your team, your current provider, or us — and we'll say plainly if something is outside our lane
Where We Assess
On-site visits across our service regions; remote assessment work anywhere.
- On-site: New York City, Long Island and Westchester County
- On-site: the Hudson Valley, North Jersey and Fairfield County, CT
- Remote-first everywhere else: visits arranged in advance and scoped in the proposal
- Remote assessment of cloud, identity, and endpoint posture wherever your systems live
Why Businesses Choose NetSys for Security Assessments
Fifteen minutes with a NetSys engineer, not a salesperson, and you will know where your security assessments stands and what it would take to fix it. Call 845-203-3914 or request a call to discuss the scope and next steps.
Who does the work: meet the NetSys team on our About page.
- An engineer interprets the findings — you're not handed a scanner export and wished luck
- The entry point is a free external penetration test, and the findings are yours either way
- Engineers who have worked real environments for 28+ years — importers, medical practices, law firms, financial firms
- A 100% ransomware recovery record standing behind everything we tell you about your backups
- Findings ranked by real-world risk and remediation effort, not by vulnerability count
- Confidentiality-first — financial clients stay unnamed, and so do you
- Month to month, like every NetSys agreement, if you decide to keep working with us
Measured results from our case studies
What a finding looks like in the report
An illustration of the report format, not a finding from a client's report. Every item in the prioritized findings list carries the same fields:
| Field | Example entry |
|---|---|
| Finding | Former employees' accounts can still sign in to Microsoft 365 |
| How we found it | Account and sign-in review in Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, checked against the current staff list |
| What it exposes | Mail and files reachable with a password nobody monitors, on accounts nobody reviews |
| Severity | High |
| Effort | An afternoon |
| Who should fix it | Your own staff; the steps are written so your current provider could act on them instead |
Findings are ordered by severity and effort together. The same report carries an executive summary for leadership and a remediation plan in working order; raw tool output sits in an appendix.
How a risk assessment runs
The same sequence for a one-area review or a six-area assessment. Only the scope changes:
- Scoping call: the question you need answered, the systems and sites in scope, and the deliverables, agreed in writing.
- Authorization and access: written approval for any active testing, read-only accounts where they are enough, and stop conditions for production systems.
- Discovery and testing: scans and configuration review, plus restore tests or a phishing simulation only where the scope includes them.
- Analysis: an engineer checks which findings are reachable and which matter to how the business runs, then ranks them by risk and effort.
- Report and walkthrough: the findings list, executive summary and remediation plan, walked through with the engineer who did the work.
- Next steps, your choice: fix it yourself, hand it to your current provider, or scope the work with us.
Timing depends on the scope and is agreed before work starts. Nothing in this sequence requires you to become a managed client.
Where we deliver Security Assessments
Security Assessments in Stamford, CT · Security Assessments in Nassau County, NY · Security Assessments in Greenwich, CT · Security Assessments in Brooklyn, NY · Security Assessments in Pennsylvania · Security Assessments in Norwalk, CT. We also support clients remotely wherever their systems run. See all locations and service areas.
Security Assessments FAQs
Is a cybersecurity risk assessment the same as a cybersecurity audit?
No. A cybersecurity risk assessment asks what could go wrong: it finds weaknesses, judges how likely and damaging each one is, and ranks the fixes. A cybersecurity audit asks whether you meet a defined standard: it tests controls against a named framework, policy or contract and records the evidence. Buyers often use 'IT security audit' for either, so agree which you need first. NetSys scopes risk assessments and remediation; a formal attestation needs a separate qualified provider.
What does a Microsoft 365 security assessment cover?
A tenant-focused scope can review administrator roles, MFA and sign-in policies, external sharing, application consent, email protection, audit visibility and backup or retention configuration. Access and licensing determine what can be examined. The output should separate confirmed findings from controls that could not be verified, assign priorities and explain the remediation options. It does not imply an internal network test or a compliance certification.
What is the difference between a security assessment and a vulnerability scan?
A scan is automated output — a tool lists missing patches, open ports, and known vulnerabilities. An assessment is an engineer reading that output against how your business actually runs: which findings are genuinely reachable, which one sits on the server your ERP depends on, and which single change closes several at once. We run scans as part of an assessment. We don't hand you the scan and call it a report.
What does a network security assessment actually examine?
Six areas: your external attack surface, identity and Microsoft 365 posture, endpoint and patch state, backup recoverability, internal network segmentation and permissions, and user susceptibility to phishing and wire fraud. Scope is agreed before we start — some clients want all six, some want the two they're already worried about.
What deliverables do we receive at the end?
Three things. A prioritized findings list, where every item states what we found, how we found it, what it exposes, a severity, and an effort estimate. An executive summary written for an owner or partner who doesn't manage IT. And a remediation plan ordered the way we'd actually do the work, split by who should do each piece. Raw tool output is included as an appendix, and an engineer walks you through all of it. It's yours to keep — including if you hand it to a different provider.
How is this different from your penetration testing service?
The free assessment is a remote external penetration test, limited to the information available to NetSys and the external scope we agree with you. A broader security assessment can include configuration review, identity posture, restore testing, permissions and segmentation, but those require a separate agreed scope. The external test cannot establish the state of controls it cannot see.
Is the assessment disruptive to our operations?
We agree access, testing methods, production constraints and stop conditions with you before starting. Configuration review may be read-only, while scans, restore exercises or active testing need their own authorization and schedule. Where testing carries operational risk, that risk and the fallback plan belong in the scope; no assessment should promise that every possible test is risk-free.
Do we have to become a managed client afterward?
No. The free external penetration test carries no obligation and the findings are yours regardless. Larger assessments are scoped and agreed up front. If you want the fixes handled by your own staff or your current provider, that's a fine outcome — the report is written so somebody else can act on it.
Will the findings help with our cyber insurance application or a client security questionnaire?
Usually, yes. What carriers and enterprise clients ask about — multi-factor authentication coverage, endpoint detection, tested backups, training — is largely what an assessment examines, so you answer from evidence instead of memory. We implement and document controls; coverage and premium decisions stay between you and your carrier.
How often should we reassess?
Environments drift. New staff, a new vendor, another office, a platform change, one exception granted 'temporarily' — the picture looks different a year later. An annual revisit is a sensible cadence, and so is timing one ahead of an insurance renewal, an acquisition, or a client security review. Managed clients get much of this continuously through monitoring rather than as a separate exercise.
How much do cybersecurity risk assessment services cost?
NetSys quotes each risk assessment after a scoping call and publishes no rate card. The price moves with the number of areas in scope, the users, devices and sites involved, whether active tests such as restores or a phishing simulation are included, and any on-site work. The remote external penetration test that often comes first is free.
How long does a cybersecurity risk assessment take?
The timeline follows the scope, and we agree it in writing before work starts. A review of one area, such as a Microsoft 365 tenant, takes less time than all six areas with restore tests and a phishing simulation. Access, approvals and change windows often set the pace as much as the testing does.
Guides on this topic
- Arrange ongoing Microsoft 365 management
- Compare the limited external penetration test
- Focus an assessment on your insurance questionnaire
- Free 7-Question Cybersecurity Self-Assessment
- vCISO Services
- The NetSys Cyber Threat Report
- The 2026 SMB Cybersecurity Checklist (Print This)
- Understanding NIST, ISO 27001, and CIS Controls
- cybersecurity consultant services
- broader IT audit
Agree the question, evidence and deliverables first.
Tell us whether you need a tenant review, a broader cybersecurity assessment or evidence for a client or insurer. We will define access, testing boundaries and deliverables before quoting the work.