Trust in your IT provider is essential for a smooth partnership. If you often feel uncertain or sceptical about their advice – whether it’s about security, data management, or system upgrades, this could signal a serious problem.  

IT support should instil confidence, providing clear, reliable guidance that aligns with your business needs. Constant doubt suggests your provider may not fully understand, or prioritise, what’s best for your business. 

What to look for: 

• A Track Record of Poor Recommendations: Past advice has led to issues or didn’t achieve the promised results. 

• Advice That Feels Self-Serving: Recommendations seem focused on their bottom line rather than genuinely benefiting your business. 

• Unclear or Confusing Solutions: Proposed solutions leave you more confused than confident, often causing frustration. 

Impact on your business: 

A lack of trust in your IT provider adds unnecessary stress, stalls decision-making, and can lead to missed opportunities for improvement. Without confidence in their expertise, you may delay or avoid important upgrades or security measures, increasing the risk of costly mistakes. A trusted IT partner enables informed, timely decisions that support growth and resilience. 

Sticking with outdated technology can seriously limit your business’s growth and leave you vulnerable to security threats. If your IT provider hasn’t recommended any new tools or upgrades recently, they might be holding you back. An effective IT partner should keep you up-to-date with the latest systems, tools, and practices, ensuring your business stays competitive and secure. 

What to look for: 

• Legacy Systems Without Modern Security Features: Continued support for outdated systems that lack the robust security or efficiency of modern tools. 

• No Recommendations for Upgrades: Your provider rarely suggests updates, newer solutions, or optimisation strategies that could benefit your business. 

• Limited Knowledge of Industry Trends: A lack of familiarity with emerging tools or practices relevant to your business sector. 

Impact on your business: 

Outdated technology makes your business more vulnerable to security threats, less efficient, and less competitive in the market. A proactive IT provider not only enhances security but also ensures your systems are agile and equipped for growth. Staying current with technology isn’t just an advantage—it’s essential for long-term resilience and innovation. 

Having a strong password unfortunately doesn’t mean you’re protected from cyber attacks, especially if reused across multiple platforms.  

Hackers are constantly looking for ways to exploit breached credentials from past data leaks, like the infamous LinkedIn breach, and use them to access other accounts.  

When you reuse a password across several sites, it takes just one breach for hackers to gain full access. If your LinkedIn password is leaked, for example, hackers will try the same password on your email, banking etc.   

If you regularly use the password on multiple accounts, try using both a password generator and password manager to help you generate and store these securely. You can also check if your password has been exposed on ‘Have I Been Pwned?‘, simply enter your email to see if your data has been leaked in a previous breach.  

Your IT provider should ensure your password security measures are in place. If you’re not already getting this kind of support, it may not be part of your IT package, but that doesn’t mean it’s not essential. Ask yourself, has your IT support talked to you about scanning for compromised passwords or implementing password management systems? If not, it’s time to ask for it.  

As part of ongoing account management, your IT support should check your domain for compromised passwords, run audits to flag weak or reused passwords and implement policies to prevent employees from using insecure credentials. This ensures that even if one password is exposed, it doesn’t lead to a chain reaction of security breaches.  

Ultimately, passwords alone won’t keep you safe – Use the right tools, keep updated, and work with your IT support to regularly audit your systems.  

A common misconception among small businesses and charities is that they’re ‘too small’ to be on hackers’ radar. The reality? Size doesn’t matter to cybercriminals. In fact, smaller businesses are often seen as easier targets because they tend to have weaker security measures in place. 

Hackers frequently look for what’s called “low-hanging fruit” – the easiest targets with minimal defences. Small businesses and charities, often operating on tight budgets, may lack the resources to invest in robust cyber security, making them ideal targets for cybercriminals. 

They aren’t interested in who you are; they’re interested in how easy it is to breach your systems. Once inside, they can steal sensitive data, hold it for ransom, or even disrupt operations entirely. 

Just because you might not have the budget of a larger company, doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself. By investing in basic security measures like firewalls, antivirus software, employee training, and regular security audits, you can avoid becoming an easy target. 

It’s important to remember that cybercriminals go where the defences are weakest, not necessarily where the big profits are. Even if you’re a smaller business, you’re still handling valuable data like customer information, donor lists, or even financial records – all things hackers can exploit. 

Cloud backup and cloud storage are commonly used terms used interchangeably, despite having different functions. Cloud backup safeguards your data from loss or harm by producing remote duplicates for emergency restoration. However, cloud storage operates similarly to an external hard drive located off-site, offering the ability to share files and access them from anywhere. Cloud storage is commonly used in subscription services like Amazon Cloud Drive, Apple iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive, to name but a few.

Cloud storage allows for convenient retrieval of data regardless of device limitations, removing the need for extra equipment, and you can upgrade your subscription plan at any point to increase storage capacity based on your company’s needs. However, one significant issue is that you manually choose files and folders you wish to save to the cloud.

A common misconception is that cloud storage is automatically backed up; however, this is usually not true. Cloud storage services such as Google Drive, SharePoint, Azure, or Dropbox provide a convenient online location to store your files but don’t provide the necessary protection against accidental deletion, damage, or hacking. If your files are affected, they may be lost forever unless you have established a backup system.

Don’t assume your data stored in the cloud is backed up; assume it isn’t and add cloud data to your list of what needs to be backed up.

Once you have determined what needs to be backed up, the next step is to decide how frequently it should be done. The frequency of saving data depends on its importance to your business: the more crucial the data, the more frequent the backups should be. 

The standard recommendation is to follow a 3-2-1 backup method, which suggests having three duplicates of each file, with at least one stored off-site. This could indicate that you have a duplicate of your original work saved on two different backup devices, or one on a backup device locally and another stored in the cloud.