About
One accountable person, and what that costs you.
Smart Connect Pros is a managed IT and cybersecurity practice in London, Ontario, led by Korey Rideout. The person who scopes your systems is the person who answers when they break. That is the whole proposition. The rest of this page is what it buys you, and where it runs out.
What you are actually hiring
Korey Rideout carries the title Partner in Success, Technology Advisor. The work is advisory as much as it is technical, and the technical work is better for it.
In practice that means the same person scopes the assessment, writes the report, deploys the monitoring agent, answers when a staff member forwards a supplier email asking to change bank details, and sits in the room when you are deciding whether to renew a contract. It suits a business still running a server in a back room as readily as one running entirely on other people's software.
Context does not get lost in a handover, because there is no handover.
The first month starts with finding out what you actually have: devices, accounts, licences, backups, and who holds admin rights, including anyone outside the business who still holds them. That turns into a written picture of what was found, what it costs to fix, and the order we recommend doing it in. That document is yours whether or not anything follows it.
There are no badges, partner logos or testimonials on this site, because none of them would tell you anything you could check. What a written assessment contains, and what it deliberately does not claim, is set out on the security page.
Where this runs out
A large provider has more bodies and longer staffed hours than a practice this size will ever have. What you get instead is continuity and judgement from someone who remembers why the last decision went the way it did. If staffed cover around the clock is the requirement, this is not the right fit, and month three is a bad time to find that out. Raise it on the first call.
The same applies to the money. Procurement advice here is not tied to a reseller quota, so when the honest answer is that the machines you already have will last a while yet, and the money is better spent on backups that have actually been restored from, that is the answer you get. It also means being willing to say when something is not worth doing.
A recommendation you can talk someone out of was never much of a recommendation.
Square Post Labs Inc., and what it changes
Square Post Labs Inc. is a separate corporation at the same London address as this practice, under common ownership. You contract with 2653278 Ontario Inc., which operates as Smart Connect Pros. Where an assessment covers a system either business is connected to, the report says so on page one. An affiliated review is internal diligence. It is not independent third-party assurance, and it is never presented as such.
If what you need is an opinion from someone with no stake in the thing being assessed, that is a reasonable thing to want, and it is better raised at the quoting stage than afterwards. Software projects are often delivered by the two businesses together, which is how custom development gets built here, and it helps when a job needs both an IT practice and software development.
If something has already happened
Call rather than email. When an account is compromised, email may not be a channel worth trusting, and the first hour is mostly containment. 226-777-3082 ext. 500.
Start with a conversation.
Tell us what is not working. If we are not the right fit, we will say so and point you somewhere better.