Silicon Beach and the creative industries
The City of Santa Monica counts more than 3,000 businesses in its creative industries and technology sector, often called Silicon Beach, and they employ about a third of the people who work in the city. Its 2024 list of principal employers includes Snap, Amazon, Hulu, Activision, Universal Music Group and Lionsgate, and the RAND Corporation is headquartered here too.
Most Santa Monica companies are much smaller than those names: a 15-person agency, a game studio, a production company, a startup in a coworking space. They tend to be cloud-first, mix Macs and PCs, hire fast and work hybrid. The IT that fits them is light on servers and heavy on identity: one account per person with multi-factor sign-in, managed laptops that encrypt and update wherever they are, and apps that all sign in through that one account.
Hybrid teams and offices that change
Many Santa Monica teams split time between home, a coworking desk and a shared office, and they grow or shrink quickly. That makes onboarding and offboarding the most important IT process here. A new hire should have a ready laptop and the right access on day one. Someone leaving should lose access the same day, with company files staying in company accounts. Our guide to IT onboarding and offboarding lists the steps.
Coworking and shared offices bring their own risk: a network you don't control, shared printers and strangers on the same Wi-Fi. We set laptops up to be safe on any network, with endpoint security, encrypted disks and secure remote access to company systems, so where someone sits doesn't matter.
Santa Monica's city fiber
Santa Monica built its own fiber network, City Net, starting from a 1998 plan to connect city buildings, schools and Santa Monica College. It now serves businesses too: internet providers sell service over it, and the city leases fiber directly to local companies. For a studio or agency that moves large files, it's worth asking whether your building can connect.
Whatever the provider, we set up the firewall, Wi-Fi and switches behind it, keep guest and work networks apart, and add a backup internet connection so one outage doesn't stop a release or a client call.
Downtown firms, hotels and shops
Downtown Santa Monica, around the Third Street Promenade and Ocean Avenue, mixes law, accounting and real estate offices with hotels, restaurants and shops. The Metro E Line ends here, at Downtown Santa Monica station, and many people who work downtown commute in from across the region.
Hotels, restaurants and shops take cards all day, so PCI DSS applies: card systems on their own network, guest Wi-Fi apart from everything else, and access reviewed. Professional firms downtown face the same email fraud as firms anywhere money moves by wire. Our guide for restaurants and hospitality businesses covers the details.
Medical practices near the hospitals
Providence Saint John's Health Center and UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica are two of the city's largest employers, and physician, dental and therapy practices cluster in the medical buildings around them. They work under HIPAA, which means a current risk analysis, secure email and texting with patients, encrypted devices and tested backups. See HIPAA compliance and IT for healthcare practices.
Fire, evacuations and staying online
When the Palisades Fire broke out in January 2025, Santa Monica ordered evacuations north of San Vicente Boulevard and issued an evacuation warning north of Montana Avenue. Offices outside the fire's path still closed for days, and a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew applied in the evacuation areas.
Files and email in cloud services with a separate backup, laptops that work securely from anywhere, and a written business continuity plan are what keep work going in a week like that. GlobeVM is based in Los Angeles and comes to you: most help starts remotely within minutes, and an engineer comes on site when hands are needed. Firms on the other side of the 405 can see our Beverly Hills page.
