Montréal's small businesses tend to sell knowledge rather than goods. Montréal International lists artificial intelligence, technology, financial services and digital creativity among the city's major sectors, and Québec's statistics institute ranks professional, scientific and technical services second in the region's economy, right behind manufacturing (2022 GDP, excluding finance and real estate).
That shapes what attackers go after. Here, the prize is rarely a warehouse full of inventory. It's a code repository, a client file, cloud credentials or the mailbox of the person who approves payments. And very often it's your own customers, a bank, an insurer or a U.S. enterprise, who ask you to prove your security before they sign.
Why Montréal's economy changes the risk picture
| Sector | What attackers want | A good first move |
|---|---|---|
| Software, cloud and AI | Developer accounts, cloud keys, training data | Phishing-resistant MFA on admin accounts and the code repository |
| Video games and digital creativity | Unreleased builds, intellectual property, community accounts | Time-limited access for freelancers, removed the day the contract ends |
| Finance and fintech | Wire transfers, client data, access to partner platforms | A two-person rule for any change to payment details |
| Professional services | Confidential files, tax data, privileged communications | A review of file sharing and email forwarding rules |
Take AI. According to Montréal International, Mila alone brings together more than 1,400 researchers and experts, and a large startup community has grown around it. For those companies, security is no longer just about servers: it's also about what employees paste into AI tools. Our article on generative AI and data leaks covers the guardrails.
The same pressure applies in gaming, where Montréal International describes the city as Canada's top production centre, and in finance, which it credits with more than 140,000 jobs in Greater Montréal. A 20-person studio or a young fintech that wants to work with a major institution will sooner or later receive a vendor security questionnaire. Knowing whether you really need ISO 27001 or SOC 2, or whether an audit will do, can save months of effort.
Downtown law firms, notaries, accounting firms and engineering practices have their own pressures: professional secrecy, regulatory bodies and busy seasons that fraudsters love. See our guides for law firms and notaries and accounting firms.
Shared buildings and hybrid teams
How Montrealers work creates blind spots too. A team split between a downtown tower, a coworking space and home offices relies on networks it doesn't control: the printer is shared with three other tenants, the building Wi-Fi is run by a third party, and the CFO's laptop rides the metro every day. Our remote work security guide lists the settings that actually matter.
How the on-site visit works in Montréal
The on-site visit is free anywhere in Montréal:
- A 15-minute call to understand your business, your tools and who we should meet.
- One hour at your office with leadership and, ideally, whoever manages your IT, in-house or at your provider. In a coworking space or multi-tenant building, we sort out together what's yours and what belongs to the building.
- A written summary of your three most useful next steps, plus a quote if you want one.
It isn't a penetration test: nothing is actively tested without a mandate and written authorization, and we don't touch the keyboard.
Services Montréal businesses ask for most
If you build software or run a client portal, a penetration test answers enterprise questionnaires head-on: it shows, with evidence, what an attacker could actually do. If your office lives in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, as most service businesses do, our Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace audit checks the settings that protect your accounts, email and shared files.
Fictional example: a Griffintown fintech
A 25-person fintech is going through vendor due diligence with a Canadian bank, which asks for recent penetration test results and proof of access controls. During the on-site visit, three priorities stand out: everyone in finance shares one administrator account in Microsoft 365, audit logs are kept for the default period only, and two former developers still have access to the cloud console. The company fixes those within a month, then books an external penetration test of its platform before replying to the bank. This scenario is made up for illustration.