Frequently asked questions.

Setup is included in your first month at no extra charge. Most onboardings are a 90-day handoff that runs in parallel with your existing provider — no service gap, no surprise bills.

Month-to-month after the first month. We earn the relationship every month. If we are not delivering, you do not pay to leave. 60 days written notice to terminate ongoing services.

Yes. The $2,500 Cyber Insurance Readiness Assessment and the $1,500 M365 Security Baseline both credit in full against your first three months (Assessment) or first month (Baseline) of any managed tier if you convert within 90 days of delivery. One credit per engagement.

Yes. Five-seat minimum on Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials + Managed IT — $475/mo and $875/mo floors respectively. Cyber Premium is negotiated at 15+ seats. The minimums exist so the model is sustainable; we cannot underprice the business into a failure mode that helps nobody.

For most clients, year one lands between $8,000 and $20,000 all-in depending on tier and seat count. The Risk Report at the end of /risk-report gives you a tier recommendation and a ballpark for your specific business in five minutes.

Cyber Essentials is managed cybersecurity only — Huntress SOC, M365 baseline, MFA, phishing simulation, backup, monthly reporting. You keep your existing IT provider. Cyber Essentials + Managed IT adds the full helpdesk, patching, asset management, and quarterly business reviews. Most clients land in Cyber Essentials + Managed IT because most do not want to coordinate two providers.

A $2,500 fixed-fee, two-week project that produces a 15-page written report mapped to your carrier's actual questionnaire. Gap analysis, risk register, prioritized roadmap, cost estimate. About 70% of assessment clients convert to a managed tier; the report is a real standalone deliverable either way.

Antivirus catches the file. Managed EDR catches the attacker. EDR watches behaviour across every process on every endpoint, and a 24/7 Security Operations Centre (Huntress) reviews the alerts so you do not have to. Most modern attacks are fileless or LOLBin-based — antivirus alone misses them by design.

No. OneDrive is sync, not backup. Ransomware, malicious deletion, or anything older than the 30-day retention window blows through OneDrive Version History. Our managed backup pairs Cove Data Protection with immutable off-site copies and tested restores — the architecture cyber-insurance carriers expect in 2026.

Same scope, same deliverables, same monthly cadence — the difference is who is providing your IT. Bundled vCISO at $1,500/mo is inside the Cyber Premium engagement; standalone vCISO at $2,000/mo is for businesses keeping their current MSP or internal IT. About a third of vCISO engagements are standalone.

Either take the free Risk Report at /risk-report, or email hello@peacecountrycyber.ca to book a 30-minute scoping call. The scoping call is free, no obligation, and ends with an honest read on whether we are a fit. If we are not, we will tell you on the call.

La Crete, Alberta. We serve clients across Mackenzie County, High Level, Fort Vermilion, Rainbow Lake, Peace River, and the surrounding region. Onsite visits are part of every Cyber Essentials + Managed IT and Cyber Premium engagement.

Cyber Essentials + Managed IT and Cyber Premium clients have direct escalation lines. Huntress SOC handles 24/7 threat detection for all tiers. Cyber Premium adds a documented incident response plan tailored to your environment, named coordinator, annual tabletop, and a 90-minute SLA on critical issues. Standalone clients can add the Incident Response Retainer at $5,000/year for the same priority line and plan.

We focus on SMBs in northern Alberta: agriculture, trucking and logistics, sawmills, oilpatch contractors, retail and co-ops, professional services (accounting, law, insurance), and municipal and healthcare. If you are a 5–50 seat business in our region, we likely fit. If not, we will tell you and refer you to someone who does.

For most clients with material gaps today, yes — typical premium reduction at renewal is 10–25% once the underlying controls are in place. We document everything in a format your broker can use directly. The Assessment alone routinely produces meaningful renewal improvements before any managed work begins.

Yes — and most brokers love it. The questionnaire crosswalk section is written specifically so a broker can use it directly when submitting the renewal application. We will also join a call with your broker at no extra charge if that helps.

The assessment is not the policy. Your carrier still issues the policy. But the documented evidence, written gap analysis, and remediation roadmap are what carriers increasingly demand for renewal at favourable rates. Clients who arrive with a written assessment routinely see 10–25% premium reductions versus arriving with a self-answered questionnaire.

Yes. Automated weekly tests against a sample of backups, manual quarterly full-restore of a real workload, and an annual full-environment drill for Tier 3 clients. Test logs, restore times, and RTO/RPO performance go into a quarterly evidence package that drops directly into the renewal application.

In almost every case, yes. The retainer produces a 12-month signed contract, a documented IR plan, a named coordinator, and quarterly tabletop evidence — which is exactly what the 2026 questionnaires now ask for. We will join a call with your broker or underwriter at renewal to walk them through the arrangement.

Some policies require breach response through a panel firm. Our retainer is complementary, not competing — we are the named local firm with your environment in our hands, while the panel firm engages on their timeline. This combination shows up well in renewals because it demonstrates redundancy in the response plan.

Dylan H., a senior IT and cybersecurity practitioner with two decades of hands-on infrastructure, identity, and security work — including breach response, regulated-industry audits, and Microsoft 365 hardening at scale. The business is moving to La Crete because the region deserves better than what national MSPs and remote-only firms have been delivering.

Yes, indirectly through Pax8 (the largest Canadian Microsoft distribution partner). This lets us bundle M365 licensing with our services at competitive rates and handle all license management for you.

Certifications are shared on the scoping call. We are not in the business of decorating the website with letters after a name; we are in the business of doing the work well. If the credentials matter to your situation, ask on the call and we will show relevance, not just acronyms.

The business is new in the region. The first real case studies will arrive after the first anchor client is onboarded and has explicit written consent to be named. We will not invent social proof. See the case studies page for the placeholder and template.

Family. The owner is moving the family north because the region matters and the work the region needs matters. Regional rates, in-person availability, and a long-term commitment to Mackenzie County are not accidental — they are why the business exists in this shape.