San Francisco MSP · Network Engineering
San Francisco managed service provider for the network only: Fortinet firewalls, switching, Wi-Fi and multi-site operations, with one senior engineer as your point of contact.
Your engineer: Cisco · Fortinet · CompTIA certified · Fortinet Engage Advocate Partner
Bay Area Market Context
Enterprise security questionnaires and recurring compliance reviews require documented network controls. For Bay Area fintech, SaaS and healthcare companies, the network section of each one is far easier to answer when the evidence already exists. SOC 2, PCI-DSS and HIPAA each examine network controls, so the network is run to a documented standard from day one.
Larger Bay Area companies compete for the same senior network engineers in San Francisco. If your IT team has no senior network engineer and needs part-time coverage with room to surge for projects, a service contract covers it without a hire; see the hire-versus-contract comparison.
By the Numbers
Years in network architecture, security and operations.
Sites delivered, including healthcare clinics, law offices, financial branches and multi-site operations.
Career figures across a network-only practice, including prior-employer work.
Why Bay Area Businesses Choose Ambio
Most managed service providers in the San Francisco Bay Area sell general IT. We run firewalls, switching and Wi-Fi for Bay Area businesses where the office stops when the network does, alongside your IT team or provider, or as sole owner of the network.
You work directly with a senior Cisco- and Fortinet-certified network engineer, not the first-level technician larger MSPs put in front of their engineers.
Firewalls, switches, Wi-Fi, VPN remote access, SD-WAN between offices, monitoring, and the evidence auditors ask for. That is the entire scope: no help desk, printers, password resets or device management.
We standardize on Fortinet FortiGate firewalls because they handle SD-WAN, secure remote access, authentication and Wi-Fi in one platform, with one configuration standard instead of three vendors’ dashboards. If you already run SonicWall, Meraki or Sophos, we manage it as-is and recommend a FortiGate replacement when it reaches end of support.
Auditors and enterprise customers want proof that network controls exist. We keep the diagrams, configurations and change history current so the evidence is ready when asked. For clinics and health-tech, see HIPAA network engineering.
What We Do
Ongoing network management covers the firewall, switches, Wi-Fi and monitoring at every site. Every Edge plan starts with a fixed-price Network Risk Assessment, so budget owners see scope and cost before any monthly commitment. For what network management services in San Francisco include, with published per-site pricing and live dashboard examples, see the dedicated page.
We review your network end to end and deliver a written report on segmentation, security posture, configuration drift across sites and compliance gaps, with prioritized recommendations and a 30-60-90 day plan. Prepaid; about two weeks for a single small site. When coverage itself is the problem, a wireless survey (validation walk and heat map) can be added.
FortiGate deployment, configuration, policy changes on request, and a quarterly posture check from the Secure plan up. Sign-in tied to your Microsoft 365 or Google accounts, encrypted links between offices and remote access for staff, all on one configuration standard under a managed plan. Moving to FortiGate from another vendor is a firewall migration, priced by model and by whether it is an HA pair.
FortiGate hardware and FortiCare renewals are available from us, quoted by part number; see our Fortinet reseller page.
For an SF headquarters with Bay Area offices in San Mateo, Palo Alto or Oakland, or a national footprint run from the Bay Area, we standardize architecture, configuration and monitoring across every site on one Fortinet platform, so every office runs to the same documented standard. Plan details are on the multi-site Fortinet MSP page.
Audit packages on request covering the network controls in HIPAA, PCI-DSS and SOC 2, prepared alongside your compliance team. Compliance mapping (HIPAA, PCI-DSS or SOC 2 control evidence) is a $2,500 add-on to the assessment, included at Complex and above; see assessment pricing.
Automated network monitoring checks managed devices and links every minute and routes alerts by severity through agreed channels, including Slack or Teams. Response hours are Mon–Fri, 8 AM–5 PM Pacific. You get a monthly network summary and, on Multi-Site, a quarterly roadmap review to catch drift before it becomes an incident.
If your network was inherited, grew piecemeal, or has drifted since a generalist MSP installed it, we redesign it to a documented standard: HA firewall pairs, aggregated cores and dual-homed access, so a single device failure does not take a site down. Fully redundant builds (HA firewalls, diverse ISPs, backed-up power) are designed to a 99.99% availability target; that is a design target, not an SLA.
Our Approach
We review configurations, validate segmentation and document gaps in writing, then rank the fixes by risk so you know what to do first.
The highest-risk findings are fixed first, then every site moves to one standard architecture. Each change is tested and scheduled with a rollback plan.
Ongoing monitoring and documented changes, with scheduled reviews from the Secure plan up.
Your Engineer
That continuity is why your Fortinet firewalls, switches and Wi-Fi follow one documented standard across your sites. For project or fractional engineering support, see our San Francisco network engineer page.
Background: Founder, ex-Meta. Past engagements include Cisco, Wells Fargo, Fannie Mae, and other Fortune 500 networks.
We supply FortiGate, FortiSwitch and FortiAP. We also monitor and manage the Cisco, Aruba, Arista and other enterprise gear you already run, so nothing has to be ripped out.
Industries We Serve
The work fits best where network reliability and audit readiness are operating requirements.
PCI-DSS aligned controls with the cardholder data network segmented from everything else, plus the architecture documentation and audit evidence that regulators and SOC 2 auditors expect. The requirement is the same for a fintech startup in SoMa and an established asset manager in the Financial District.
Bay Area lab networks, from Mission Bay to the Peninsula, need instruments isolated from corporate traffic, and validated environments that change only under documented control, so lab systems subject to FDA 21 CFR Part 11 are not disturbed. We design for those constraints and schedule network work around long-running experiments.
SF and Peninsula tech companies face SOC 2 cycles and enterprise security questionnaires that ask about corporate network controls. We run the corporate network to that standard so the security team can focus on application security.
Retail, hospitality and professional services firms often run an SF headquarters with offices across the Peninsula, East Bay or other states. We make opening each new site a documented, repeatable process; South Bay offices can start at the San Jose MSP page.
Law firms in the Financial District and across the city need to protect confidential matter data and answer client security questionnaires. We design and document network segmentation around those requirements; architecture, engineering and accounting firms have the same need.
Bay Area clinics need HIPAA-aligned segmentation, EHR availability, secure remote access for clinicians and patient-data isolation, from independent SF specialty practices to multi-site Peninsula clinics. Recurring managed coverage for clinics is delivered through your existing MSP (co-managed); see HIPAA managed network.
Service Area
On-site work and remote operations across the SF Bay Area: San Francisco, the Peninsula, East Bay and South Bay, from the Financial District and South of Market to Mission Bay and the Sunset. Onboarding, hardware swaps and project work are done on site, with visits scheduled as the work requires; day-to-day operations are remote.
Sacramento-area businesses should start at the Sacramento Fortinet MSP page.
FAQ
They sell general managed services. We cover only the network, so an internal IT person or general MSP without network engineers gets that gap filled without a hire.
Either works. If you already have an MSP for general IT, keep them and bring us in for the network layer alone: your IT keeps the help desk and the users, and we run the firewall, switches and Wi-Fi alongside them. That is the co-managed network model. If you want one party responsible for network and security infrastructure, we take that on. We will tell you directly which fits your situation after the assessment.
The Network Risk Assessment is $3,500 for a single small site: one firewall, up to three switch groups (a stack counts as one), 100 connected devices and 6 access points; larger networks are priced by size on the assessment pricing page.
Managed plans are flat monthly fees per site, from $695 for Edge Essential to $2,495 for the first Multi-Site site plus $995 for each additional site (minimum two sites). Essential includes no change labor; standard changes bill at $225 an hour with a 30-minute minimum. Secure, Compliance and Multi-Site include one, two and three hours of standard changes a month. Firewall migrations start from $6,500, or from $8,900 for 100F–200F models and HA pairs. Full rates are on the plans and pricing page. The assessment tells you which plan fits.
Every plan includes automated monitoring and alerting. Human response is business hours, at the service level in your agreement; outside business hours, emergency work is available at the after-hours emergency rate when an authorized contact requests it and we accept, subject to engineer availability. Response means investigation begins, not an acknowledgment that is escalated later. It is not a repair-time or uptime guarantee.
We do not perform the audits; auditors do. We operate the network with the documentation, configuration discipline and saved evidence that keep the network-controls portion of a SOC 2, PCI-DSS or HIPAA audit straightforward and well-evidenced. For clinics, see HIPAA network engineering and the HIPAA managed network plan.
Start in the Bay Area
If your Bay Area operations depend on the network, the assessment is the first step. Prices by network size are on the assessment pricing page, and you can read a sample report (PDF) first.
Response within 1 business day.
A direct conversation with the engineer, not a sales team.
A straight answer on whether we are the right fit, and clear next steps if we are.
