About SysAdmin On Demand
Consulting built on relationships, not contracts. A small practice of senior sysadmins with specialist reflexes.
Why we exist
The story starts at 10 years old, with a first real project: a FreeBSD router, built piece by piece with a total stranger met on mIRC, on the Undernet network. Hours spent writing firewall rules line by line and figuring out how the internet actually works.
Nearly three decades later, the curiosity never wore off. Years of running Linux, macOS, and Windows day to day shaped how we see everything: you can only secure what you know how to run, and you can only fix what you understand from the inside.
Big firms want long contracts, big invoices, and clients with dedicated IT departments. Meanwhile, the local dental clinic, the twelve-person accounting firm, and the growing online shop are left to figure it out alone, or take whoever answers the phone.
We started SysAdmin On Demand to close that gap, the way a family doctor or a lawyer runs their practice: small by choice. You talk directly to a senior sysadmin, hand-picked by the founder, and that's the person who does the work.
What we've built
A few engagements from the field. Anonymized for clients, exact for everything else.
Zoo network: 60 buildings, 2,000+ devices
Fiber between buildings, segmentation, Wi-Fi for visitors and for operations, and 2,000+ devices to keep online every day.
Emotet botnet: supporting law enforcement
Identifying infrastructure tied to the Emotet botnet with law enforcement, through to the takedown. We can't say more about that one.
Firewall and segmented network
Meraki and Fortinet firewalls deployed and administered: network segmentation, site-to-site VPN for remote work, and rules reviewed one by one, not inherited allow-alls.
Datacenter and private cloud
More than 7 years working in datacenters, including helping build one from scratch: racks, cabling, network, and an OpenStack private cloud in production.
Migration to Microsoft 365
A 30-person firm on an aging file server: email, shared folders, and identities moved to Microsoft 365. Zero data loss, zero downtime days.
Backup and recovery plan
Encrypted off-site backups, proven by real monthly restore tests. The goal: rebuild a critical server within a day, not just pile up backups.
How we work
Based in Québec, we work wherever a mandate takes us, remotely and on-site. When the work needs boots on the ground, we travel. When a video call is more practical, we make it work across time zones.
This isn't a lifestyle choice dressed up as a business model. It's a deliberate call: flexibility and responsiveness over fixed overhead. Which means we can serve a clinic in Montreal on Monday, advise a logistics company in Amsterdam on Wednesday, and be on a call with a startup in Austin on Friday.
What we don't do is treat clients as account numbers in a portfolio. Every engagement is built on a direct, personal relationship. You know who you're working with, and they know your business. That continuity is how real security improvements happen.
And yes, we can say no. The relationship goes both ways: every request is assessed to make sure we can genuinely help. If it's out of scope, bad timing, or not the right fit, we'll tell you straight and point you somewhere better, the way a doctor refers you to a specialist.
Our favorite analogies
Security explained the way we would at your kitchen table.
Schrödinger's backup
A backup that has never been tested is Schrödinger's cat: until you restore it, it both works and doesn't. Open the box before the disaster does: test your restores.
A firewall is your front door
Your house has a front door, windows, and a back entrance, and you don't leave them all wide open when you head out. A firewall does the same for your network: what should stay closed stays closed, and what has a key gets through.
The password safe
Your neighbor keeps their important papers in a safe with one combination to remember. A password manager is exactly that: an encrypted safe that slips into your pocket and remembers everything for you.
What we believe
Security should be accessible. Whatever your size, you deserve competent guidance, at a fair price, in language you understand.
Mastery of the system is the foundation of security. We know Linux, macOS, and Windows down to the kernel. That's why our security holds up in the real world, not just on paper.
The best security culture is built with your team, not around it. We work with your people. The goal: leave your organization stronger and more self-sufficient, not dependent on us.
Relationships outlast contracts. We don't lock anyone in because we don't need to. When the work speaks for itself, people come back. That's been our experience, and we intend to keep it that way.
We like AI. A lot, actually. Used well, it multiplies your team instead of replacing it. We use it ourselves, with guardrails, and we help you do the same.
The human side of it all
Cybersecurity isn't just machines. Alert fatigue, concentration eaten by notifications, the embarrassment after a phishing click, the stress of an incident or a scam: we've seen it too often to pretend otherwise. We'll talk it through with you, no jargon and no judgment. And when it goes beyond our role, we refer you to real health professionals.
We speak bitcoin, too
Self-custody, private keys, hardware wallets, and never photographing your seed phrase: protecting your sats is applied cybersecurity. A topic we love.
Your business deserves better
than "we'll get back to you."
Let us show you where you stand and what it takes to get secure. The first conversation is free, and there's no obligation.