The office and the operation
Abbotsford’s economy is built on agriculture and the businesses around it: berry, poultry and dairy farms, greenhouses, packers and processors, cold storage, and the transport companies that move product. Manufacturers and aviation businesses operate around the airport, and the city’s professional offices and clinics serve the whole Fraser Valley.
Many of these businesses have two kinds of technology: the office, with email, payroll and accounting, and the operation, with equipment controllers, scales, label printers, cameras and monitoring systems. Attackers don’t care which one they get into first. If both sit on one flat network, a single infection can reach everything. Our cybersecurity services are designed to protect both.
Keeping equipment and office systems apart
The most important change for most Abbotsford operations is segmentation. We split the network into zones:
- Office: staff computers, email, accounting and payroll.
- Operations: controllers, scales, label printers and production PCs, often running older software that can’t easily be updated.
- Cameras and building systems: security cameras, door access and environmental monitoring.
- Guests and personal devices: completely separate, with internet access only.
Rules between zones allow only what’s needed. Older equipment that can’t be patched is shielded instead of being left exposed, and remote access for equipment vendors goes through a controlled, logged connection rather than an always-open door.
Stopping the attacks that actually happen
Beyond the network, we focus on the threats that hit Fraser Valley businesses most often:
- Ransomware, stopped by endpoint detection and response on every computer, prompt patching, and backups kept isolated from the network. Our backup and disaster recovery service makes sure recovery is fast if anything gets through.
- Payroll and supplier fraud, where a fake email asks to change a direct-deposit account or a supplier’s bank details. Multi-factor authentication, email security and a call-back rule for any banking change stop most of it.
- Account takeover, blocked with multi-factor authentication on every email and cloud account, including shared mailboxes used by seasonal staff.
Seasonal staff and shared devices
Seasonal hiring is normal in agri-food, and it creates security gaps: shared logins on shop-floor PCs, accounts that are never removed, and personal phones checking work email. We set up individual accounts that are quick to create and remove, use simple shared-device setups where they make sense, and make sure access ends on the last day of the season.
Customer and partner requirements
Larger customers and supply-chain partners increasingly send detailed security questionnaires before they’ll sign or renew a contract. We help you answer them accurately and put the required controls in place. The same protections are what cyber insurers look for, which helps when you apply through your broker.
Getting started
Book a free security review. We’ll look at your office and operational systems, explain the risks in plain English and give you a prioritised plan with clear costs. For everything else we do locally, see IT support in Abbotsford.
