Ottawa’s small and medium-sized enterprises — whether in fintech, medtech, or professional services — operate in a regulatory-dense ecosystem where PIPEDA, PHIPA, and PCI-DSS intersect with rapid cloud adoption. Choosing the wrong IT company in Ottawa risks compliance violations, unplanned downtime, or vendor lock-in. This guide details eightattributes to seek from any provider delivering Ottawa small business IT support. Bedrock IT exemplifies each criterion through engineered solutions, local presence, and measurable outcomes.
1. Carrier-Grade SLA with Sub-4-Hour P1 MTTR
Look for contractual SLAs that define Priority 1 incidents (complete system outage) with a Mean Time To Resolution under four hours, not just response. The agreement must specify on-site dispatch within 60 minutes for Ottawa-Gatineau clients and include penalty clauses — credits per hour beyond SLA.
Bedrock IT operates a dedicated NOC in Kanata with dual-homed 10 Gbps fibre from Bell and Rogers, ensuring sub-50 ms latency to any downtown data centre. Our engineers carry encrypted YubiKeys and pre-staged loaner hardware in marked vans. In one ransomware recovery scenario, Bedrock IT restored a locked VMware cluster in 2 hours 41 minutes — using immutable Veeam backups while preserving chain-of-custody for the Canadian Cyber Security Centre.
Outcome — Zero revenue loss; forensic artefacts submitted to CCIRC within 24 hours.
2. Multi-Layered SOC Using XDR + SOAR Orchestration
A modern IT company in Ottawa must run an always-on Security Operations Centre that ingests Extended Detection and Response telemetry from endpoints, cloud workloads, and network TAPs. Demand integration with a Security Orchestration, Automation and Response platform that auto-quarantines lateral movement at the first IOC.
Bedrock IT’s SOC deploys Microsoft Sentinel as the data lake, enriched by CrowdStrike Falcon Insight EDR and Darktrace Antigena for network AI. When a phishing link was clicked in a healthcare environment, SOAR playbooks isolated the workstation in 11 seconds, pushed a BitLocker recovery key to IT, and triggered a password reset via Okta — before the attacker reached the domain controller.
Ottawa context — Healthcare providers under PHIPA must report breaches within 72 hours. Bedrock IT’s average detection-to-containment is 43 seconds, giving clients a 71-hour buffer for legal notifications.
3. Immutable, Versioned Backups with Air-Gap Rotation
The 3-2-1 rule is table stakes. Insist on 3-2-1-1-0 — three copies, two media types, one off-site immutable, one offline, zero errors on quarterly recovery tests. The off-site copy must use WORM (Write Once Read Many) storage with retention lock.
Bedrock IT anchors backups in Veeam Hardened Repository on CentOS with SELinux enforced, replicating to Wasabi buckets locked for 90 days. Physical air-gap is achieved via Iron Mountain tape vault in Nepean with barcode tracking. In a Ryuk attack simulation, 42 TB of POS data was restored from a tape dated 72 hours prior — while the ransomware key expired.
Technical note — We script synthetic fulls nightly and incremental forever chains, reducing RPO to 15 minutes for most workloads.
4. Zero-Trust Architecture Enforced by SDP and NAC
Perimeter VPNs are obsolete. Demand a Software-Defined Perimeter that authenticates identity, device posture, and context before brokering east-west micro-tunnels. Pair this with 802.1X Network Access Control that dynamically assigns VLANs based on certificate trust.
Bedrock IT implements Cloudflare Access for SaaS and Cisco ISE for on-prem. When a hybrid work policy was rolled out, Bedrock IT issued TPM-sealed Windows Hello for Business certificates to laptops. Employees connect to QuickBooks Desktop via RDP gateways that terminate at a jump-box in our Kanata DMZ — never exposing the file server to the internet.
Result — External attack surface reduced by 97 %; internal segmentation prevented credential stuffing from spreading.
5. Microsoft 365 GCC High or CSPM Automation for SaaS
If your IT company in Ottawa still logs into the admin portal manually, walk away. Require Infrastructure-as-Code for M365 via Terraform or PowerShell DSC, plus continuous Cloud Security Posture Management.
Bedrock IT maintains a GitLab CI/CD pipeline that drifts M365 configs back to CIS Level 1 benchmarks nightly. We enable Defender for Cloud Apps with anomaly detection and block legacy authentication globally. In one case, automation flagged an over-permissioned SharePoint site sharing sensitive documents with “anyone with the link,” preventing a potential compliance violation.
Compliance mapping — Automatic alignment with ITSG-33 controls for federal contractors.
6. Local Tier-3 Data Centre Footprint with vSAN HCI
Cloud-only providers expose you to egress fees and latency. Seek an IT company in Ottawa with rack space in a Tier-3 facility (e.g., Cologix OTT1 or Aptum YOW1) running VMware vSAN hyper-converged infrastructure for rapid VM provisioning.
Bedrock IT leases two full racks in Cologix with dual 10 Gbps cross-connects to AWS Direct Connect and Azure ExpressRoute. We spin up vSphere Replication targets for clients, achieving RTO under 15 minutes. During the December 2023 ice storm, a dental clinic lost on-prem power; Bedrock IT failed over their database to our HCI cluster and served patients via AnyConnect from backup generators.
Green bonus — Our vSAN all-flash nodes run at 1.2 PUE thanks to Ottawa’s cold aisle containment.
7. Documented Quarterly Penetration Tests with Re-test
Annual pen-tests are compliance theatre. Demand black-box, grey-box, and red-team exercises every 90 days, scoped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, with a mandated re-test within 30 days of remediation.
Bedrock IT’s in-house CREST-certified pentesters use Cobalt Strike and custom beacons written in Nim to emulate APT29. After discovering an exposed RDP gateway, we pivoted through a misconfigured domain trust, dumped LSASS, and presented a Golden Ticket — then patched and re-tested in 11 days.
Deliverable — Executive summary in plain language + technical appendix with packet captures.
8. Transparent Pricing with Per-Device or Per-User MRR
Hidden “gotcha” fees erode trust. Require an all-inclusive Monthly Recurring Revenue model — per endpoint or per user — that bundles unlimited remote support, patch management, and vCIO hours. Insist on a 30-day opt-out clause.
Bedrock IT offers flexible tiers
- Per-Device — Covers Windows/macOS/Linux, M365 licensing, EDR, backups, and 24/7 NOC
- Per-User — Adds VDI via Azure Virtual Desktop and unlimited on-site visits within the Greenbelt
A boutique agency switched from a break-fix model to our per-user plan — gaining predictable costs while a fractional CIO aligned their CRM migration with PIPEDA consent workflows.
Secure Your Ottawa SMB Today
Demand these eight pillars from any IT company in Ottawa — and accept no compromises. Bedrock IT delivers them through proven, local expertise.
Schedule your zero-cost, zero-pressure IT roadmap session
Phone: 613.702.5505
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://ottawa-it-services.ca/
