Oil and Gas IT Services in Western Canada
North Star serves oil and gas customers across British Columbia, Alberta, and Yukon. We bring deep platform skills (Microsoft 365, Azure, cybersecurity, networking), plus the practical experience of running IT for organizations like yours in real conditions.
How North Star helps oil and gas businesses.
Capabilities tuned to the specific needs of the oil and gas sector in Western Canada.
Field connectivity that holds up.
Cellular, Starlink, and microwave links engineered for remote leases, camps, and well sites. Failover routing keeps SCADA and safety systems online.
SCADA and OT network design.
Segmented networks isolate operational technology from corporate IT. Firewall rules, monitoring, and asset inventories are documented and auditable.
Cybersecurity for energy sector.
EDR, MFA, immutable backup, and security awareness training tailored to the energy sector threat profile, including ransomware and ICS attack vectors.
Ruggedized field IT.
Tablets, laptops, and field printers selected to survive cold, dust, and vibration. Standard imaging, MDM enrolment, and remote wipe come with every device.
The IT problems this sector runs into.
These come up in almost every conversation we have with oil and gas operators. They are solvable.
Sites beyond reliable coverage.
Leases, batteries and compressor stations frequently sit outside fixed-line and dependable LTE. Satellite, microwave and private LTE all work; picking the right combination for the terrain and the traffic, and managing it once installed, is where most operators would rather not be the expert.
Control systems on the corporate network.
SCADA and PLC equipment in this sector predates any assumption that it would be internet-reachable. When it ends up on the same network as email and file shares, a routine compromise becomes an operational one, and the consequences are physical rather than only financial.
A workforce that is mostly not yours.
Service companies, inspectors and consultants all need access, usually urgently and usually temporarily. Without a defined process, access is granted informally and never revoked, and the account list stops resembling the people actually on site.
Regulatory records that have to survive an audit.
The BC Energy Regulator and the Alberta Energy Regulator both expect records to exist and to be produced. An environment that grew organically over a decade rarely has the access logs, retention or documentation an audit asks for until someone goes looking.
What North Star delivers for oil and gas.
Practical IT services built around how these businesses actually work.
Remote site links with failover.
Starlink, microwave and private LTE scoped against the site rather than a catalogue, with redundant paths and automatic failover so a single link does not isolate a location. We scope, install and then keep running it.
Managed network →Operational and corporate networks kept apart.
Firewall and VLAN architecture separating control systems from corporate IT, implemented and then documented in a form an insurer or regulator will accept. The documentation is half the deliverable.
Cybersecurity →Contractor access with an expiry date.
Time-bound accounts, multi-factor on remote access, and a joiner and leaver process that runs whether or not anyone remembers. Reviewable, so you can answer who had access to what and when.
Identity and MFA →Backups proven by restoring them.
Backup of the systems that carry your regulatory and production records, tested by performing restores rather than by reading a job report. Recovery time measured and written down before you need it.
Backup and DR →Common questions from oil and gas customers.
Do you serve northeast BC and the Peace Country?
Yes. North Star supports oil and gas operations in Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Grande Prairie, Fort McMurray, and across northeast BC and northern Alberta.
Can you do field installs?
Yes. North Star dispatches technicians to lease sites, camps, and remote facilities. We coordinate with safety, orientation, and PPE requirements.
Do you support SCADA and OT networks?
Yes. North Star designs and operates segmented IT and OT networks for oil and gas customers, including firewalls, monitoring, and incident response.
Are you familiar with regulatory requirements?
Yes. We work with customers subject to BCER, AER, and CSA cyber requirements. We help document controls and respond to regulator inquiries.
Can you support fly-in fly-out operations?
Yes. Remote management, image-based device setup, and Starlink deployments mean remote and FIFO operations get the same support quality as head office.
What makes energy-sector IT different
Remote, regulated, and running equipment that predates the office network. The IT problems follow from where the work happens rather than from the size of the company.
Sites past the end of the road.
Compressor stations, batteries, wellheads and camps with no fibre and often marginal cellular. Satellite and fixed wireless are normal rather than exotic, and support has to work when a site visit means several hours of driving.
SCADA is not office IT.
Control and telemetry systems have availability requirements and patching constraints that office equipment does not. They belong on a segmented network with monitored, minimal paths in, not on the same VLAN as the accounting workstations.
Records that have to be producible.
Regulatory and safety documentation has retention obligations, which makes backup a compliance question as well as a continuity one. Being able to produce a record from three years ago is a real requirement.
Where we are straight with you: North Star is not a SCADA integrator. We segment, monitor and protect the network your control systems sit on, and we work alongside the vendor who owns the control system itself. A provider claiming to do both is worth a follow-up question.
Rotations, camps and connectivity
Fly-in and fly-out rotations change what good support looks like.
Shifts, not business hours.
Support that matches when people are actually working, including night shift and the changeover day when a whole crew needs accounts, devices and access at once.
Connectivity people live on.
Camp networks carry both operations and everyone's personal use, and treating them as one flat network is how a stranger's laptop ends up next to your systems. Separating the two is the baseline. See remote camps.
Ruggedised, and planned for loss.
Devices in trucks and on sites get destroyed. Management that can wipe remotely, plus a replacement process that does not need a purchase order signed off in Calgary, keeps people working.
More industries we serve
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