Network Security Services · Texas
Network Security Services for Texas Businesses
Uprite designs, hardens and monitors the network layer for Texas businesses, covering firewalls, VPN and remote access, segmentation, switching and wireless, with a sub-10-minute triage SLA and a 120-day satisfaction guarantee.
The equipment guarding your perimeter is now the most attacked thing you own. In most buildings we walk into, it is also the least often patched.
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The Data
The Way In Is No Longer a Password. It Is Your Perimeter.
For a decade the answer to how attackers get in was stolen credentials. That answer changed. Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report, covering incidents from November 2024 through October 2025, found that 31% of breaches now start with a software vulnerability. Exploitation has overtaken stolen passwords as the single most common way in. Ransomware turns up in 48% of all breaches.
The uncomfortable part is where those vulnerabilities live. We pulled CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on August 18, 2026, catalog release 2026.08.18. It holds 1,670 vulnerabilities CISA has confirmed are being exploited in the wild. Not a watch list. 309 of them sit in perimeter equipment: firewalls, VPN concentrators, routers, switches, wireless controllers and load balancers. Here is the vendor breakdown.
| Vendor | Entries in CISA KEV | Where they live |
|---|---|---|
| Cisco | 96 | ASA and Firepower firewalls, IOS and IOS XE, small business routers |
| Ivanti | 35 | Connect Secure and Policy Secure VPN gateways |
| Fortinet | 29 | FortiOS, FortiProxy, FortiManager |
| D-Link | 26 | Routers and network storage, much of it past end of support |
| Citrix | 22 | NetScaler ADC and Gateway |
| SonicWall | 17 | SMA remote access appliances and firewall OS |
| Palo Alto Networks | 15 | PAN-OS and GlobalProtect |
| Zyxel, Juniper, NETGEAR, Sophos, F5 and 9 more | 69 | Firewalls, routers, switches, wireless and load balancers |
Read the third column as a list of things that are probably in your building right now. Of those 309 perimeter entries, 69 carry CISA’s flag for known use in ransomware campaigns. 90 were added in the last twenty months. 37 arrived in 2026 alone, which is one in five of everything CISA added to the catalog this year. None of it is exotic. It is the standard kit Texas businesses buy from the same three or four vendors.
309 of the 1,670 vulnerabilities in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog are in perimeter equipment, and 69 of those are flagged for known use in ransomware campaigns. One in five vulnerabilities CISA added in 2026 was a firewall, VPN gateway, router or switch. If nobody in your business owns firmware, nobody owns the front door.
The cost side is not improving. IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026 puts the global average at $4.99 million, a 12% jump and a record high. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 1,008,597 complaints in 2025 against $20.877 billion in reported losses, with business email compromise alone accounting for $3.046 billion across 24,768 complaints. Texas sits second among all states by complaint volume. Texans reported $1.35 billion in losses in the 2024 edition of the same report. This is not somebody else’s problem.
Definitions
Network Security, Cybersecurity and Managed Security Are Three Different Purchases
These three get sold as one thing, quoted as one thing, and then argued about at renewal. They are not the same. Each buys a different scope of work, and a quote that blurs them is a quote you cannot compare against another one.
Ask which layer. Two providers can both say network security and be quoting work that differs by a factor of four, so get the scope in writing before you put two numbers side by side.
Network security
Network security is the layer between your users and everything else. Firewalls and their rule sets, VPN and remote access, segmentation between departments and between IT and operational technology, switch port security, wireless authentication, DNS and outbound filtering, and the firmware running on all of it. It is infrastructure work. Network engineers do it. It is measured in configuration state rather than alert volume.
Cybersecurity program
A cybersecurity program is wider. Endpoint protection, identity and MFA, email security, awareness training, policy, and the risk register that ties them together. Network security is one component. That full program is what our cybersecurity solutions practice covers, and most businesses need both, in that order.
Managed security service
A managed security service is the 24/7 watch on top. A staffed SOC, log collection and retention, detection engineering, and someone who calls you at 3am. Buying monitoring without fixing the network underneath is the most expensive mistake in this category, because you end up paying a managed security services provider to watch a flat network report the incident it could not have prevented. Fix the network first. Uprite runs all three, which is the point. The engineer who designs your segmentation works in the same company as the analyst watching traffic cross it, so a finding turns into a change rather than a ticket forwarded to a vendor.
What Is Included
What Network Security Services Actually Cover
Everything below is scope. Not upsell. If a competing quote leaves one of these out, that is worth a question before you sign rather than a surprise in month four.
Firewall management and rule review
Policy design, rule hygiene, change control and quarterly review. Most firewalls we inherit carry rules nobody can explain, written for a server that was decommissioned years ago. Every one of those is a hole somebody left open on purpose.
VPN, remote access and ZTNA
Remote access built so a stolen password is not a network. MFA on every tunnel, per-application access instead of a full-network tunnel, and split tunneling configured deliberately rather than by default.
Network segmentation
Separating finance from guest Wi-Fi, clinical devices from workstations, and plant floor OT from the office network. Segmentation turns a breach into an incident instead of an outage. Insurers ask about it first.
Switching, wireless and port security
802.1X authentication, network access control, VLAN design, rogue access point detection, and a wireless estate where a visitor in the lobby cannot see a server. A closet of unmanaged switches is not a design.
Edge firmware and patch lifecycle
Tracking every internet-facing device against the CISA KEV catalog and vendor advisories, with a maintenance window that actually exists. This is the control that closes the 309-entry gap above. Somebody has to own it.
DNS filtering and outbound control
Blocking command-and-control traffic, newly registered domains and known malicious infrastructure at the resolver. Cheap and fast to deploy. It catches what got past the endpoint.
Monitoring, logging and response
Flow data, firewall and switch logs collected and retained, with alerting tied to a real response path. Backed by our 24/7 SOC. Nobody reads that Saturday inbox.
Assessment and documentation
A current network diagram, an asset register with firmware versions and end-of-support dates, and a prioritized findings report. Auditors, insurers and your next provider all ask for this. Almost nobody has it.
The Money
How Network Security Is Priced, and Where the Real Number Hides
Four models are in common use. Know which is which. Each is honest in the right situation and misleading in the wrong one.
- Per user, per month. Rolls network security into a managed IT or MSSP subscription. Simple to budget and the most common structure for businesses under about 300 staff. Our managed security services start at $40 per user per month. Check what counts as a user before you sign.
- Per device or per appliance. Bills by firewall, switch and access point. It suits multi-site businesses with a lot of hardware and few users, and it punishes a single-site office with two hundred people behind one firewall.
- Per site or per circuit. Common for retail, clinics and franchise operations. Predictable per location, and it hides the fact that a small branch and a headquarters take very different amounts of work.
- Project plus managed. An assessment and remediation project up front, then a monthly retainer. This is the honest structure when a network has been neglected, because the first ninety days genuinely are not steady-state work.
The renewal cliff nobody budgets for
Here is the line item that ruins network security budgets, and it is almost never in the first quote. Business firewalls are sold with subscription licensing. Threat prevention, URL filtering, sandboxing and support all renew annually, and the renewal is frequently a large share of what the hardware cost in the first place. Then it gets worse. The hardware itself reaches end of support, the vendor stops issuing firmware, and an end-of-support firewall becomes a permanently unpatchable device sitting on the internet.
So ask two questions. What is the annual subscription renewal, in dollars, for every appliance in scope. And what is the published end-of-support date for each one. A provider who cannot answer both from their own asset register does not have an asset register, which was the actual finding. Pricing for the wider managed relationship is set out on our Texas managed IT pricing page.
Send us a list of your internet-facing devices and their firmware versions. We will check every one against the CISA KEV catalog and vendor advisories and send back what we find, including the answer that everything is current.
Coverage
Four Ways to Cover the Network, and Who Gets Paged at 2am
The equipment barely changes between these. The difference is ownership. What changes is who is responsible when the VPN stops answering on a Friday night, and how long the gap runs between a vendor publishing an advisory and somebody acting on it.
| Model | Who responds when the firewall fails at 2am | Best fit |
|---|---|---|
| Break-fix plus vendor support | Vendor support, in their business hours, after you open a case | Single-site businesses with no after-hours operations and a tolerance for a day of downtime |
| Internal IT with vendor contracts | Your one network person, if they answer | Companies with a genuine network engineer on staff and a documented escalation path |
| Co-managed network security | Shared, by written agreement | Internal teams that own the design and need overnight cover, patching discipline and a second opinion |
| Fully managed network security | Uprite, 24/7, against an SLA | Most businesses between 20 and 500 staff, particularly multi-site and regulated ones |
The two middle rows are where most Texas businesses actually sit, and they are the two that get quoted worst. Our co-managed IT model exists for exactly that case. Your team keeps the systems it knows, ours takes the hours and the firmware discipline nobody in the building wants to own. Put the split in writing.
What We Do
Assessment, Segmentation, Hardening, Monitoring and Proof
Five things decide whether a network security engagement is worth the money. Here they are. In order.
The network security assessment
We start by mapping what is actually there, which is rarely what the last diagram says. Start with the truth. Every internet-facing device and its firmware version. Every firewall rule and what it permits. Wireless and switch configuration, VPN accounts including the ones belonging to people who left, and each device checked against the CISA KEV catalog and vendor advisories. You get a written findings report with a prioritized remediation order and an honest note on what is already fine. The assessment stands on its own. Take it elsewhere if you want.
Segmentation design
Flat networks are the reason one infected laptop becomes a company-wide outage. We design segmentation around how the business actually runs: finance separated from general staff, guest wireless that touches nothing, clinical and payment systems in their own zones, and IT separated from operational technology in plants and facilities. Draw it first. Then we write the rules that enforce it. Manufacturers have a harder version of this problem, which we cover in manufacturing cybersecurity in Texas.
Hardening and the patch lifecycle
Every internet-facing device gets an owner, a firmware baseline, a maintenance window and a tracked end-of-support date. When CISA adds an entry that matches something you run, it becomes a scheduled change rather than a news article you read about later. This is unglamorous work. It is also the control that maps directly to the 31% of breaches that now start with an exploited vulnerability.
Monitoring and response
Firewall, switch and VPN logs collected and retained, flow data analyzed, and alerts routed to a staffed SOC rather than an unread mailbox. Detection is only worth what the response behind it is worth. So every alert class has a defined action and a defined person. Noise gets tuned out, not ignored.
Proof for insurers and auditors
Cyber insurance applications and framework audits now ask specific network questions. Is remote access behind MFA. Is the network segmented. Are end-of-support devices still in service. Do you retain firewall logs, and for how long. Answer them with a document. That is a deliverable rather than a byproduct, and it is what most businesses discover they are missing three weeks before a renewal date. Our compliance work covers HIPAA, GLBA, FINRA, PCI DSS, and CMMC and NIST 800-171 for defense suppliers.
If you already have firewalls and a provider who has gone quiet, we take over existing networks. That starts with the assessment above and an honest report on what we find, including the parts your current provider got right.
The First 90 Days
How a Network Security Engagement Actually Runs
Nobody wants their network rebuilt on a Tuesday afternoon. Nothing happens unannounced. This is the sequence, and the disruptive parts happen in a window you pick.
| Stage | What happens | Typical duration |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Discovery | Passive assessment. Device and firmware inventory, firewall rule export, wireless and VLAN mapping, VPN account audit, KEV and advisory cross-check | 1 to 2 weeks |
| 2. Findings | Written report, prioritized by exploitability and blast radius, with a remediation order and a cost against each item | 3 to 5 days |
| 3. Edge hardening | Firmware updates, rule cleanup, MFA on remote access, removal of dead accounts and stale rules, in agreed windows | 2 to 4 weeks |
| 4. Segmentation | VLAN and policy changes staged site by site, tested before enforcement, rolled back cleanly if anything breaks | 2 to 6 weeks |
| 5. Monitoring cutover | Log sources connected, alerting tuned, response runbooks written and agreed | 1 week |
| 6. Review cadence | Quarterly rule review, firmware and end-of-support reporting, annual reassessment | Ongoing |
A single-site network usually runs six to ten weeks end to end. Multi-site takes longer, and the long pole is almost never technical. It is scheduling. Specifically, it is getting a maintenance window signed off by whoever owns the operation that cannot stop.
Honest Fit Check
Who This Suits, and Who Should Not Buy It
Worth a conversation
Businesses between roughly 20 and 500 staff with more than one site, or one site and real after-hours operations. Anyone running clinical, payment, plant floor or building systems on the same network as email. Companies with an internal IT team that is good but has nobody who owns firmware. Regulated firms that need to answer network questions on an insurance or audit form with evidence. Anyone whose firewall is out of support, or who does not know whether it is. Businesses that inherited a network from a provider who has stopped returning calls.
Probably not us
Companies under about ten people running entirely on a consumer router and cloud applications, where the honest answer is DNS filtering, MFA and a better router rather than a program. Organizations shopping strictly on the lowest monthly number, because the models that produce the lowest number are the ones that exclude the firmware work that matters most. Businesses that want monitoring bolted onto a flat network without fixing the network, which we will decline. Anyone who wants an assessment purely to satisfy a form, with no intention of acting on the findings.
We would rather say during the assessment that your network is in reasonable shape than sell you a program you do not need, because a client who resents the invoice at renewal costs us more than the contract was ever worth. We will say so. If the finding is that you need three changes and not a retainer, that is what the report will say, and the wider practice is on our managed IT services in Texas page if you decide you want more than the network layer.
What Clients Say
Hector and Kareem are super helpful! They are always willing to take on my computer problems even if its small. I had my mouse disappear off my screen, it was an user issue but Hector didn't make me feel small or "dumb" for this error. We love uprite!
I’ve been extremely satisfied with Uprite Services and would recommend them without hesitation. They consistently deliver reliable, high-quality work and truly feel like a true partner rather than just another vendor. A special thank you goes to Arvin Ebueng, he is always quick to respond to our needs and incredibly easy to communicate with. No matter how busy things get, Arvin makes sure we’re taken care of promptly and with a smile. His responsiveness and clear communication have made every interaction smooth and stress-free. Thank you, Arvin and the entire Uprite team, Peerless Equipment is a customer for life!
I had been having trouble with an IT matter that I didn't think would be fixed but Arvin Ebueng from Upright took his time with me and worked with me until we were able to resolve the issue. The issue was an internal issue with the way the program was written, but Arvin came up with a great work around so that I am now able to do what I need to do at my job. Long story short, he got me access to both things that I need access to simultaneously and daily. Thanks 😊 Arvin, you are much appreciated 👏 💐 🥳.
Gerardo Sanchez was very helpful & professional. Uprite Services has great customer service and outstanding technicians. We have used them for several years and will continue our business with them.
I'm am not a "tech" person, however the team at Uprite gets me through the technological side of computers and software so that I can function on a daily basis... but the most enduring quality is that they care. Special shoot out to Mary, Sergio, Eufemio, Hector, and Jeff just to name a few... I appreciate each of you and the help you give me.
Great service by Juan and Jacob. Always helping us out at Alamo City Trailer Sales. We have been using this company for over 10 years and always happy with the work they do.
Common Questions
Network Security Services FAQ
What are network security services?
Network security services protect the layer between your users and everything else: firewalls, VPN and remote access, segmentation, switching, wireless, DNS and the firmware running on all of it. In practice that means designing and maintaining the rules that decide what can talk to what, keeping every internet-facing device patched against known exploited vulnerabilities, and monitoring the traffic that crosses those boundaries. It is distinct from endpoint or email security. It is the containment layer. Network security decides whether one compromised laptop becomes a single incident or a company-wide outage.
What is a network security assessment, and what do I get?
A network security assessment is a documented review of your network’s current state, delivered as a prioritized findings report you own and can act on with anyone. Uprite’s assessment covers every internet-facing device and its firmware version, the full firewall rule set and what each rule permits, VLAN and wireless configuration, VPN accounts including orphaned ones, and a cross-check of every device against the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and vendor advisories. It takes one to two weeks for a single site. The deliverable is a written report. Not a sales call.
How much do network security services cost in Texas?
Most Texas businesses buy network security inside a per-user monthly subscription, and Uprite’s managed security services start at $40 per user per month. The figure that gets missed is annual subscription renewal on the firewalls themselves, covering threat prevention, filtering and support, which often runs a large share of what the hardware originally cost. Ask any provider for two numbers before you compare quotes: the annual renewal per appliance, and the published end-of-support date for each one. Then compare like for like.
What is the difference between network security and cybersecurity?
Network security is one layer inside a cybersecurity program. They are not interchangeable. Network security covers infrastructure: firewalls, VPN, segmentation, switching, wireless and edge firmware. A cybersecurity program covers all of that plus endpoint protection, identity and MFA, email security, awareness training and policy. The distinction matters when you compare quotes, because a network security number and a full program number are not the same purchase and should not be judged against each other.
How often should firewall rules be reviewed?
Quarterly at minimum, and after every significant change to how the business operates. Firewall rule sets accumulate. Rules get added for a project, a vendor or a server, and almost nothing ever removes them, so a five-year-old firewall typically still permits traffic for systems that no longer exist. Each of those is an opening somebody created deliberately and then forgot about. A review documents what every rule is for and removes the ones nobody can justify.
Does my business really need network segmentation?
If a single compromised laptop can reach your accounting system, your file server and your building controls, then yes. Segmentation is the limit. It decides how far an incident travels, and it is the control cyber insurers and auditors ask about most consistently. It matters most for businesses running clinical devices, payment systems, plant floor equipment or building automation on the same network as email and web browsing, which describes most Texas manufacturers, clinics and multi-site operations.
How quickly should a firewall or VPN vulnerability be patched?
Treat any device that appears in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog as an emergency change rather than a scheduled one. Patch it now. Inclusion means confirmed exploitation in the wild rather than theoretical risk. As of catalog release 2026.08.18 the catalog held 1,670 entries, 309 of them in perimeter equipment such as firewalls, VPN gateways, routers and switches, and 69 of those flagged for known use in ransomware campaigns. Uprite tracks every internet-facing device you run against that catalog and against vendor advisories.
What happens to network security when everyone works remotely?
The perimeter moves. It shifts to identity and to the VPN or ZTNA gateway, which is exactly why those gateways are now among the most exploited products in CISA’s catalog. Remote access should require MFA on every session, grant per-application access rather than a full network tunnel, and be patched with the same urgency as anything else facing the internet. Orphaned VPN accounts belonging to people who left the company are one of the most common findings in our assessments.
Related
Network and Cybersecurity Across Our Texas Metros
- Cybersecurity solutions, the full program this network layer sits inside
- Managed security services provider, if you need the 24/7 SOC on top
- Cybersecurity services in Houston
- Cybersecurity services in Dallas
- Cybersecurity services in San Antonio
- Cybersecurity services in Fort Worth
- IT support in Texas, if the network is one part of a larger problem
Start With What You Actually Run
Get a Network Security Assessment
Send us a list of your internet-facing devices and their firmware versions, or just tell us what brand of firewall is in the closet. We will check every one against the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and vendor advisories and send back what we find, including the answer that everything is current. No sales theater. Call 866-570-3065 or use the form on this page.
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