Thetford Mines
IT services in Thetford Mines: workstations and servers kept current without stopping work
An update pushed to tomorrow for months on end. A server nobody dares restart. A third-party program never patched since it was installed. That is how a fleet falls behind, quietly. OKTO Solutions keeps patches current remotely, from Trois-Rivières, about 139 km from Thetford Mines.
In Thetford Mines, OKTO Solutions applies Windows and third-party patches to workstations and servers, continuously, in all three of its plans. The work is scheduled, tracked and reported, and each employee runs updates at a convenient moment from the OKTO button on the workstation. The team is based in Trois-Rivières, about 139 km away.
Who keeps an SMB’s workstations and servers up to date in Thetford Mines?
OKTO Solutions offers its services to SMBs in Thetford Mines from its office in Trois-Rivières, about 139 km away, with no premises and no technician stationed there. Patch management is part of its managed IT services and is done remotely. It covers Windows and third-party applications, on workstations as well as servers, and it is included in all three plans: Base, Standard and Complet. Patches are applied continuously, without the client having to ask, then tracked and reported. A patch that falls behind raises an alert at OKTO. The employee keeps control of the timing: the OKTO button on the workstation shows the pending updates and lets the person run them when it suits. The monthly report states what was applied. The Complet plan adds vulnerability management and detection. Regular support covers the working week, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The finding
Why do updates fall behind in a small business?
Because they belong to no one. When no provider is in charge of them, a patch goes on the day the workstation restarts, and on servers it never goes on at all. The laptop that gets closed instead of shut down piles up pending updates. The server keeps running because everyone is afraid to restart it.
The delay is seldom in Windows alone. In an audit, third-party software is more often what lags, the kind installed once and forgotten. Windows ends up nagging. Those programs say nothing.
Then there are the machines nobody counts. A workstation missing from the inventory receives no patch, since no one knows it exists. That is why taking over a fleet begins with a survey of what is plugged in.
The risk is real. Systems behind on patches are among the first things a starting audit brings out, along with accounts lacking multifactor authentication and shares open to the whole organization. Updating systems and applications is one of the four foundation measures in cybersecurity, the ones put in place before any more advanced investment.
OKTO RMM · Updates A rollout seen from the console: workstations come up to date one after another, and the server waits for its scheduled restart.
The scope
What exactly gets updated?
Four things, and a fifth that changes everything: proof that the work was done.
| What we look at | With nobody in charge | With OKTO patch management |
|---|---|---|
| Windows on workstations | The patch waits for the next restart, whenever that is | Applied continuously, and the person picks the moment |
| Third-party applications | Installed once, seldom patched afterwards | Patched under the same management as Windows |
| Servers | Never updated, for fear of restarting them | Patched as part of scheduled upkeep |
| Machines off the inventory | Invisible, so never patched | Picked up in the fleet inventory, then tracked |
| Proof | No trace of what was done | Tracked and reported, with changes dated and kept |
Patches are included in the Base, Standard and Complet plans. Complet adds vulnerability management and detection. The three levels are compared on the plans page.
Getting back on track
In what order do you bring a lagging fleet up to date?
Five steps, taken from the onboarding approach we follow with every new client.
- Count. Workstations, servers, licences, access: we inventory what exists, including what has been lying around for years.
- Deal with what is pressing. An emergency found during the inventory, like an expired antivirus or a backup failing in silence, does not wait for the rest of the plan.
- Install monitoring. The management tool goes on every machine. It is what will deploy the patches and show which ones are missing.
- Catch up. Missing patches are applied during rollout, while workstation protection and backups are being put in place.
- Settle into the normal rhythm. Continuous monitoring, patching, monthly reports and review meetings.
Monitoring, patches, backup and report: four tiles on one console, and an activity feed filling up.
Day to day
How do you update without interrupting work?
By separating two things that get lumped together: the installation and the timing. The installation is our business. The timing, on a workstation, belongs to whoever is using it.
Every managed workstation carries an OKTO button in the notification area. Its menu displays the state of the machine and the updates waiting for it. The employee runs them when it is no bother, instead of halfway through a quote that is due. The same menu is how they write to us if something looks off afterwards.
Servers follow a different logic. Their patches belong to what is scheduled, on the same footing as upkeep and restore tests. They are not left to the luck of a restart.
Behind all that, monitoring checks the result. A patch falling behind comes up as an alert on our side, like a failing disk or a failed backup, usually before anyone at your office notices a thing. Then the report on the state of the fleet says what was applied.
These tools are ours. Monitoring runs on OKTO RMM, a platform developed by our team, which lets us add a check when a client needs one.
The ground
Thetford Mines, about 139 km from our office
Thetford Mines is the seat of the Les Appalaches regional county municipality, in the Chaudière-Appalaches region. Route 112 serves the city.
At that distance, all routine work travels over the network, and patching lends itself to it: nothing requires a technician in front of the machine. We have neither an address nor a technician stationed in Thetford Mines, and no visit time is promised there.
Outside office hours, outages that stop the business go through the emergency line. It comes with the Complet plan and is taken as an option with the other two. The rest of the territory is listed under service areas, and the full content of the service is on the managed IT services page. To tell us how many workstations and servers need catching up, write to us through the contact page.
Questions and answers
Your questions about updates in Thetford Mines
Do you have a technician in Thetford Mines?
Will updates restart our workstations in the middle of the day?
Do you update anything besides Windows?
Are patches included in the Base plan?
How do we show our insurer that our systems are up to date?
Do we have to replace our old computers before starting?
When were your servers last updated?
Give us the number of machines in service in Thetford Mines and the name of whoever handles updates today. We will tell you where the delay is and in what order to tackle it.
Reviewed by Antonio Pazzi, president of OKTO Solutions · updated