Houston Area Security Index 2026
Business Security Scorecard Analysis by Region and Industry
Houston Area Security Index 2026: External Scan of 4,393 Houston Businesses
Published June 15, 2026. Updated September 25, 2026. Research by Shane Stevens, CEO of CinchOps
The Houston Area Security Index measures the public security posture of businesses across the greater Houston area in five industries: law, accounting, manufacturing, commercial construction and trades, and engineering. Scores reflect what an attacker sees from outside the network - DNS health, exposed employee data, weak configurations, and known vulnerabilities.
Filter by Region
Filter by Industry
Security by IndustryAverage scores by category
Grade DistributionOverall grade
Regional ComparisonCompare security metrics across regions
Category PerformanceAverage scores by security category
Category Grade BreakdownGrade distribution per category
Business Details
| Industry | Region | Business Count | Final Grade | Social Engineering | Application | IP Reputation | Network | DNS | Vulnerabilities |
|---|
Key Findings
CinchOps scanned 4,393 Houston-area small and mid-sized businesses across 12 cities and 5 industries using external attack-surface signals only. The dataset reflects what a threat actor can see from the public internet without ever touching the target network.
- 49.6% of the businesses scanned failed with a D or F grade. Only 24.6% earned a passing A or B. The average overall grade is a D+ (1.51 GPA).
- DNS Health remains the weakest category at a 1.24 GPA, with 60.4% failing and only 11.5% passing. Application Security follows at 1.53, then Network Security at 1.94. The pattern has held across every industry added to the index: the categories that require deliberate configuration are the ones that fail, while IP Reputation, where sensible defaults do the work, passes at 100%.
- Commercial Construction and Trades is still the strongest industry at a 1.71 GPA with 41.7% failing, followed by Manufacturing at 1.57. Engineering Firms, added in September 2026, land third at 1.51 - but with a 52.4% fail rate that is worse than Legal at 51.0%. CPA practices remain last at 1.32 with 55.5% failing.
- Engineering firms are the index's clearest split between average and floor. Their overall grade sits mid-table, yet they hold the single worst regional cell measured: Cypress engineering firms at a 1.00 GPA with 75% failing. Every Houston suburb scored below the city itself for this industry, which reverses the pattern seen in law, accounting and manufacturing.
- No region in the index averages better than a C. Among cities with at least 25 businesses scanned, The Woodlands leads at 1.59. Houston, with 3,720 of the 4,393 businesses, sets the metro baseline at 1.52. Sugar Land trails at 1.28. Adding a fifth industry and 676 more businesses moved the metro average by 0.00 - the picture is stable.
How to cite: CinchOps. (2026). Houston Area Security Index 2026. https://cinchops.com/houston-area-security-scorecard/
Source data: Download the full dataset as CSV (55 rows, 38 columns)
Scope and comparability: This is first-party data collected directly by CinchOps and is not available elsewhere. Scope is limited to external signals with no insider access, five industries, and twelve Houston-area cities. Rankings above include only cohorts of at least 10 businesses, and the regional leaderboard uses a 25-business floor. One caveat on reading category scores across industries: the set of checks behind these grades has expanded over time, and industries added more recently were measured against a broader range of email-authentication and DNS tests than the earlier ones were. Overall grades are unaffected - cohorts scanned against the larger check set average the same as those scanned against the smaller one. Category-level differences across industries, DNS Health in particular, should be read as directional rather than exact. The index is updated periodically as new industries are added and industries already covered are rescanned.
Closing the Gaps Behind Your Grade
Most businesses on this page scored a D in DNS Health and a C in Network Security. Those are not exotic problems. They are patching gaps, expired certs, open ports, and missing MFA. The work below is what closes them, quietly, consistently, every day, for businesses across the Houston area.
Managed IT
The foundation. We run your environment so problems get caught at 2 a.m. instead of in a Monday morning ticket queue.
- 24/7 monitoring of servers, workstations, and network gear
- Patch management for OS, browsers, and third-party apps
- Endpoint hardening and configuration drift control
- Asset inventory and license tracking your auditor will accept
Cybersecurity
The defenders. Built on the same controls a Fortune 500 SOC uses, sized and priced for businesses with 10 to 200 employees.
- Managed EDR with 24/7 threat hunting and response
- MFA, conditional access, and identity hardening for Microsoft 365
- Email filtering with DMARC, DKIM, and SPF configured correctly
- Quarterly phishing simulations and staff awareness training
Business Continuity
The safety net. When a ransomware crew or a flooded server room shows up uninvited, you are back at work in hours, not weeks.
- Immutable off-site backups tested monthly, not just configured
- Documented disaster recovery plan with named owners
- Tabletop exercises for ransomware, outage, and insider scenarios
- Incident response retainer with a defined SLA
Know Your Business Security Score
Get a FREE comprehensive security assessment for your Houston area business. Understand vulnerabilities across your network, applications, DNS, and more.
Regions Ranked by Average Grade
Cities with at least 25 scanned businesses, sorted by aggregate grade point average across all five industries. No city in the index averages better than a C.
| Rank | Region | Businesses | Average GPA | Pass Rate | Fair Rate | Fail Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Woodlands | 183 | 1.59 | 27.5% | 24.7% | 47.8% |
| 2 | Richmond | 25 | 1.52 | 34.8% | 13.0% | 52.2% |
| 3 | Houston | 3,720 | 1.52 | 24.9% | 25.7% | 49.4% |
| 4 | Cypress | 53 | 1.47 | 17.0% | 37.7% | 45.3% |
| 5 | Katy | 150 | 1.46 | 18.8% | 29.9% | 51.4% |
| 6 | Tomball | 54 | 1.43 | 22.2% | 25.9% | 51.9% |
| 7 | Sugar Land | 154 | 1.28 | 20.1% | 22.1% | 57.7% |
Industries Ranked by Average Grade
All five industries average below a C. The trades outperform the professional-services cohorts, which hold more sensitive client data and protect it less well.
| Rank | Industry | Businesses | Average GPA | Pass Rate | Fair Rate | Fail Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Commercial Construction & Trades | 648 | 1.71 | 28.0% | 30.3% | 41.7% |
| 2 | Manufacturing | 955 | 1.57 | 24.8% | 28.5% | 46.6% |
| 3 | Engineering Firms | 676 | 1.51 | 24.9% | 22.8% | 52.4% |
| 4 | Legal | 1,351 | 1.47 | 25.7% | 23.4% | 50.9% |
| 5 | CPA | 763 | 1.32 | 18.9% | 25.6% | 55.5% |
Top 5 Strongest Region-Industry Combinations
Minimum 10 graded businesses per cell. Commercial construction and trades firms hold four of the top five spots. The one exception, The Woodlands CPA practices, is the strongest professional-services cell in the index.
| Rank | Region / Industry | Businesses | GPA | Pass Rate | Fair Rate | Fail Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sugar Land / Commercial Construction & Trades | 16 | 1.94 | 25.0% | 43.8% | 31.2% |
| 2 | Cypress / Commercial Construction & Trades | 12 | 1.92 | 25.0% | 50.0% | 25.0% |
| 3 | The Woodlands / CPA | 32 | 1.81 | 32.3% | 32.3% | 35.5% |
| 4 | The Woodlands / Commercial Construction & Trades | 13 | 1.77 | 30.8% | 23.1% | 46.2% |
| 5 | Houston / Commercial Construction & Trades | 536 | 1.71 | 28.8% | 29.7% | 41.5% |
Bottom 5 Weakest Region-Industry Combinations
Minimum 10 graded businesses per cell. Cypress engineering firms are the weakest cell in the entire dataset, and engineering takes two of the bottom five despite a mid-table industry average. Sugar Land takes the other three - the same city that holds the strongest cell in the index, its construction firms, which is a reminder that geography explains far less than the individual business does.
| Rank | Region / Industry | Businesses | GPA | Pass Rate | Fair Rate | Fail Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cypress / Engineering Firms | 12 | 1.00 | 16.7% | 8.3% | 75.0% |
| 2 | Sugar Land / CPA | 56 | 1.10 | 9.8% | 29.4% | 60.8% |
| 3 | Sugar Land / Manufacturing | 20 | 1.15 | 25.0% | 10.0% | 65.0% |
| 4 | Katy / Engineering Firms | 23 | 1.17 | 13.0% | 21.7% | 65.2% |
| 5 | Sugar Land / Legal | 41 | 1.27 | 29.3% | 9.8% | 61.0% |
Six-Category Performance Profile
Each business is graded on six categories. Categories perform well where defaults handle security (IP reputation, automatic patches, baseline email filters). Categories fail where security requires active configuration (SPF/DKIM/DMARC, security headers, network exposure controls).
| Rank | Category | Average GPA | Pass Rate | Fair Rate | Fail Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | IP Reputation | 3.92 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 2 | Vulnerabilities | 3.17 | 78.2% | 0.2% | 21.6% |
| 3 | Social Engineering | 2.93 | 96.6% | 0.1% | 3.3% |
| 4 | Network Security | 1.94 | 29.9% | 5.7% | 64.4% |
| 5 | Application Security | 1.53 | 4.3% | 43.5% | 52.2% |
| 6 | DNS Health | 1.24 | 11.5% | 28.1% | 60.4% |
Purpose and Intent
This information is shared not to create alarm, but to provide actionable data that can enhance your firm's security discussions and decision-making processes. We believe that informed businesses make better security choices, and transparency in cybersecurity assessment helps the entire Houston Area business community strengthen its defenses against evolving cyber threats.
Assessment Methodology
All data was gathered using industry-standard security scanning tools that analyze only externally visible, publicly accessible information. No unauthorized access to internal systems was attempted or conducted. The assessment utilized standard security reconnaissance techniques commonly employed by cybersecurity professionals.
Scorecard Categories
Social Engineering - Emails of employees exposed on the internet
Application Security - Common website and application vulnerabilities
IP Reputation - Suspicious activity, such as malware or spam, from your IPs
Network Security - Insecure network configurations and settings
DNS Health - The health of your domain name server
Vulnerabilities - Exposures and risks detected on your external assets
Scoring System
| Score | Grade |
|---|---|
| 4.0 | A |
| 3.0 - 3.99 | B |
| 2.0 - 2.99 | C |
| 1.0 - 1.99 | D |
| 0 - 0.99 | F |
Download CSV (55 rows)
CinchOps. (2026). Houston Area Security Index 2026. https://cinchops.com/houston-area-security-scorecard/
CinchOps - Houston Managed IT
I run CinchOps, a managed IT provider in Katy. We scanned 4,393 Houston-area businesses from the outside - the same view an attacker gets - because you cannot fix an exposure you have never seen. As a service to the Houston area business community, we published the index so any company can see where its region and industry actually stand.
CinchOps is a managed IT services provider based in Katy, Texas, serving small and mid-sized businesses across the Houston metro area. CinchOps specializes in cybersecurity, network security, managed IT support, VoIP, and SD-WAN for businesses with 10 to 200 employees. See IT support in Houston, or talk to CinchOps.
- Shane Stevens, CEO and Founder, CinchOps - LinkedIn
"Most Houston businesses have never seen their network the way an attacker sees it. The scorecard exists so that first look does not happen during an incident."