Incident Response & Ransomware Recovery in Texas
The worst time to decide who to call is the morning the files will not open. Sentinel-Pros writes the plan while things are calm, then runs containment, recovery, and reporting when they are not. Houston work includes on-site response, and everywhere else in Texas we operate remote-first with travel scheduled from Houston when hardware needs hands.
The Problem
Most Texas companies under 150 employees discover their incident plan does not exist at the exact moment they need it. Somebody notices files renamed on a shared drive at 6 a.m., the office manager starts calling people, and three hours are lost before anyone decides whether to pull the internet connection. Meanwhile the questions stack up fast: is payroll data gone, do we owe a customer notification, does the insurance carrier need to hear from us before we touch anything, and who is authorized to say yes to any of it. Backups often exist but nobody has proven they restore, so the first real test happens live with the company down. By the time a firm this size finds an outside responder, the evidence needed to answer regulators and insurers has already been overwritten.
The Solution
We do the unglamorous preparation first: an incident response plan naming real people, a call tree that works after hours, decision authority written down, and backup restores tested rather than assumed. When something happens, we run containment and scoping, coordinate with your carrier and counsel so coverage is not jeopardized, preserve what investigators and regulators will ask for, and rebuild in an order that gets revenue-critical systems back before convenience systems. Remote response begins quickly anywhere in Texas, because isolation, credential resets, and log review are all done over the network. On-site work is direct in the Houston metro and scheduled from Houston elsewhere when servers must be rebuilt in a rack or evidence must be handled physically. We do not promise a recovery time, because anyone who does before seeing the environment is guessing. Pricing is a fixed monthly retainer scoped on a discovery call.
Core Responsibilities
Before Anything Happens
During The Incident
Getting Back To Work
Engagement Process
Map What Would Hurt
We identify the systems and data that stop the business if they stop: the ERP, the dispatch board, the drawings, the patient records, the customs filings. That list drives every other decision in the plan.
Write The Plan And Prove The Backups
Roles, authority, notification obligations, and contact paths get documented in something readable at 3 a.m. Then we actually restore from backup to confirm the recovery path exists rather than assuming it does.
Rehearse It
A tabletop walks your leadership through a realistic scenario. The value is finding gaps: nobody knows who declares an incident, the backup administrator is the person whose account was compromised, the carrier contact left the company last year.
Respond And Report
When an event occurs we contain, scope, recover, and document. Afterward you get a written account of what happened, what worked, and the specific fixes that keep it from repeating.
Where We Deliver This
Common Questions
We have not been attacked. Is this premature?
Preparation is the entire point. The work that shortens a recovery from three weeks to three days is done before the event: tested backups, documented authority, and a plan your staff has walked through. Once an incident starts, your options are only the ones you already built.
Should we pay a ransom?
That is a business and legal decision, not a technical one, and it belongs to your leadership with counsel and your insurance carrier at the table. Our job is to give them accurate information about what was taken, what can be restored without paying, and what the sanctions and reporting exposure looks like. We do not push a company in either direction.
Our insurer requires their own approved responder. Does that conflict with you?
No, and it is common. Many policies require carrier notification and a panel firm before certain costs are covered. We prepare you to make that call correctly, work alongside the panel responder, and supply the environment knowledge they will not have. Calling the carrier before wiping anything is one of the first steps in the plan we write.
How quickly can you help if we are in West Texas or the Rio Grande Valley?
Remote containment proceeds the same way it would for a Houston client, because isolating accounts, cutting network segments, and pulling logs are network tasks. If hardware must be touched, we schedule travel from Houston and help you line up a vetted local pair of hands for simple physical work in the meantime.
What does incident response readiness cost?
It is scoped on a discovery call and delivered as a fixed monthly retainer based on your size, number of sites, and the systems that matter most. We will not quote before understanding what you already have, since paying for duplicate tooling helps nobody.
Ready to get started?
BOOK A CONSULTATIONAcross Texas
Texas produces a wide range of businesses that cannot simply be offline for a week, and the reasons differ by region. An oilfield services company running crews in the Permian loses billable field time the moment dispatch and ticketing go dark, and its operator customers ask pointed questions afterward. Gulf Coast chemical and fabrication firms sit inside plant supply chains where a compromised vendor becomes a safety and site access problem, not only an IT one. Clinics and specialty practices across the state carry breach notification duties the day patient records are touched, which turns a technical event into a regulatory one within hours. Software and services firms in Austin and the northern Dallas suburbs face customer contracts with their own notification clauses and hard recovery expectations. Defense and aerospace suppliers around San Antonio and Fort Worth answer to prime contractors who want incident reporting on a schedule. Customs brokers and logistics operators in Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley cannot miss a crossing window while somebody rebuilds a server. Add hurricane season on the coast and grid stress inland, and most Texas leadership teams already understand operational disruption. Ransomware is the same conversation with a shorter fuse and a legal tail, and it deserves the same kind of plan the company already keeps for weather.
Incident Response & Ransomware Recovery by City
Local detail for each community we serve. See all service areas.