Frequently Asked Questions.

Sentinel South Inc is a Managed IT, Security, and Compliance provider focused on law firms, accounting practices, and medical offices across Alabama, New York, and Pennsylvania. We handle the full IT lifecycle — setup, monitoring, security, backup, and ongoing support — so your staff can focus on clients, not technology problems.

We're headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama (13521 Old Highway 280, Ste 101D, Birmingham AL 35242-1406) with onsite service in New York City, Long Island, Scranton, and Wilkes-Barre. We provide remote support nationwide. Our primary verticals are law firms, CPA and accounting practices, and medical/dental offices.

We respond to all new client inquiries within one business day. For existing clients with urgent issues, call us directly at 205-354-6950 or use your dedicated remote support link.

Fair question — ask it of any provider our size. Three things protect you: documentation — every client environment is fully documented (credentials vaulted, configurations recorded), so nothing lives in one person's head; backup engineers — two additional engineers have standing access to our documentation and tooling and can step in for support and emergencies; and the 24/7 SOC — our security operations center monitors and automatically isolates threats around the clock, with no dependency on any one person being awake. You're never one phone call away from being stranded.

Standard business hours are Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM ET / 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM CT. We are available to both our New York and Alabama clients during full business hours without either market waiting. After-hours remote support is available at a premium rate for urgent situations — contact us to discuss after-hours coverage options for your organization.

Every managed plan includes the core stack: remote monitoring and management (RMM), automated OS and third-party patching, managed endpoint detection and response (EDR), identity threat detection for Microsoft 365 (ITDR), helpdesk support during business hours, and ongoing documentation of your environment. Higher tiers add M365 backup and archiving, BCDR (business continuity and disaster recovery), advanced email security, and priority response. Pricing varies by tier — see "How much does managed IT cost?" below.

Yes. We can deploy managed EDR and/or identity protection (ITDR) as standalone services for organizations that already have an internal IT team or another MSP. This is our co-managed security model. Contact us to discuss scope.

Yes. We manage M365 licensing through established distribution channels. We handle procurement, security baseline deployment, MFA configuration, user provisioning, and ongoing administration. We recommend M365 Business Premium for most clients in regulated verticals due to its included Defender for Business and Intune capabilities.

Yes, day-to-day — but we'll be upfront with you: our security and compliance stack is built around Microsoft 365, and that's where we deliver the strongest posture for regulated firms (managed device compliance, conditional access, data loss prevention, identity threat detection). Workspace doesn't give us the same depth of control. If you're open to it, we'll walk you through what a migration to M365 actually looks like — most firms are surprised how uneventful the cutover is, and it's a scoped project we handle end-to-end. If you're committed to Workspace long-term, we'll tell you honestly on the first call whether we're the right partner.

Yes. We offer project-based and time-and-materials engagements for security assessments, Windows 10 → 11 upgrades, new PC deployments, network refreshes, and M365 tune-ups. Our project engineering rate is $200/hour with a 1-hour minimum. Contact us to scope your project.

A Fractional vCISO (virtual Chief Information Security Officer) gives you a named, accountable security officer without the cost of a full-time hire. We perform quarterly security posture reviews, maintain your incident response plan, assist with cyber insurance applications, produce an annual security report for leadership or the board, and serve as your point of contact for vendor security reviews. This is particularly valuable for law firms and accounting practices that are asked by clients or insurers to demonstrate security governance. Starting at $1,500/month.

Microsoft Intune is the device management platform included in M365 Business Premium. In our Premium and Compliance tiers, every company-owned device is enrolled in Intune — which means we can enforce BitLocker encryption, push security baselines, apply conditional access policies (so only compliant, registered devices can access company email and data), and remotely wipe a lost or stolen device. For a multi-office firm, this is how you ensure that a laptop in a branch office meets the same security standard as one at headquarters. Enrollment is handled during onboarding and typically takes 2–4 weeks for larger environments.

Yes. We source business-grade workstations, servers, and networking equipment, and we manage the full lifecycle — procurement, configuration, deployment, warranty tracking, and planned refresh scheduling. Having us handle hardware means one point of contact when something fails, and a documented refresh plan so you're never caught with end-of-life equipment unexpectedly. See our Hardware Lifecycle page →

This is one of the fastest-moving issues in professional services IT right now. Most firms have staff using consumer AI tools — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — without any policy, audit trail, or data controls. That means client data and privileged information may be leaving your firm through channels you haven't approved. We help firms audit what AI tools are in use, block unsanctioned tools, deploy approved alternatives with enterprise data agreements, and build a written AI acceptable use policy. For firms deploying Microsoft Copilot for M365, we handle the required permissions audit and sensitivity label deployment first. Learn more about our AI Governance services →

IRS Publication 4557 requires all tax preparers and accounting firms that handle federal tax returns to implement a Written Information Security Plan (WISP) — a documented set of policies and technical controls protecting client data. The IRS actively enforces this requirement. We help accounting firms build their WISP and implement the underlying technical controls (encryption, MFA, patching, access controls, backup) that make it real — not just a document that sits in a drawer.

Bar associations in most states have issued formal guidance — and in some cases ethics opinions — requiring attorneys to implement "reasonable" security measures to protect client confidential information. This includes secure email practices, device encryption, access controls, and incident response planning. We help law firms implement these controls practically and cost-effectively, without requiring a large IT budget.

We work with medical and dental offices and implement HIPAA-aligned IT practices: encrypted devices, MFA, secure remote access, audit logging, and business associate agreement (BAA) awareness. We are not a HIPAA compliance auditor — for formal HIPAA risk assessments we can refer you to appropriate partners — but we handle the technical IT controls that underpin HIPAA compliance for small practices.

Our technical controls are aligned to CIS Controls v8 — the most practical security framework for small and mid-size organizations, and one that maps directly to NIST CSF. This means when your IT committee, cyber insurer, or outside counsel asks "what framework are you using?" the answer is defensible and documented. For regulated verticals specifically: we align accounting clients to IRS Publication 4557, law firm clients to state bar data security ethics guidance, and NY-regulated entities to NYDFS 23 NYCRR Part 500. We do not perform SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audits, but our work prepares your environment for those reviews.

Yes. Sentinel South carries professional liability (Errors & Omissions) insurance and cyber liability insurance. We provide certificates of insurance on request as part of your vendor due diligence process. Contact us at Compliance@SentinelSouth.com or mention it during your discovery call.

We price per user, per month. Lite is $69/user/month for solo operators — basic productivity with 30 minutes of support included. Standard at $109/user/month adds unlimited business-hours support, the full productivity suite, and email backup. Premium at $179/user/month is where most of our clients land — it adds managed device compliance, conditional access, DLP, advanced email security, workstation BCDR, and front-of-queue priority support. Compliance at $229/user/month is our tier for regulated firms and includes everything in Premium plus security awareness training, dark web monitoring, password vault, WISP and incident response documentation, and an annual compliance attestation letter.

We offer two fixed-fee standalone assessments that don't require a managed services commitment. The NYDFS Part 500 Readiness Assessment ($1,495 flat) delivers a section-by-section gap analysis against the NY cybersecurity regulation, a written findings report, and a remediation roadmap. The Cyber Insurance Readiness Assessment ($1,495 flat) maps your current environment against what your insurer is asking for, identifies which gaps are driving your premium, and produces an evidence package for your broker. Both assessments are completed within 2–3 weeks and include a 60-minute debrief call. The fee is credited toward your first 3 months of managed services if you proceed within 90 days.

Yes. Onboarding fees vary based on the size and complexity of your environment. They cover environment documentation, RMM agent deployment, security baseline implementation, and initial security review. We scope onboarding honestly — we don't charge for things we're not doing.

Start with a free 15-minute discovery call — contact us here. We'll ask about your current setup, your biggest pain points, and what you're trying to accomplish. From there we'll recommend a plan and scope, send you a proposal and MSA, and schedule onboarding. Most onboardings take 1–3 weeks depending on environment size.