03/04/2026
We recently onboarded a business that had been with the same IT provider for over 15 years.
The business owner wasn’t disengaged.
They knew what they were paying for.
They believed they were protected.
Within hours of getting access, we uncovered the reality.
No working backups.
Not degraded. Not intermittent.
No usable recovery point for close to 12 months.
Infrastructure issues had been silently breaking backups in the background and no one had picked it up. No one had fixed it.
But it didn’t stop there.
We also found what should never exist in a managed environment:
– Administrator passwords that were six characters long
– No complexity, no special characters
– Patterns as simple as three letters followed by “123”
– An excessive number of Domain Admin accounts
This is a cardinal sin for any Managed Service Provider.
The business was operating right on the edge.
One ransomware event.
One failed server.
One bad update.
That’s all it would have taken.
Not an inconvenience. Not downtime.
Closure.
This wasn’t a failure of the business owner.
This was a failure of the provider.
If you’re positioning yourself as a Managed Service Provider, this is the baseline:
– Backups must work
– They must be monitored
– They must be tested
– Administrator access must be tightly controlled
– Security must be enforced, not assumed
Anything less isn’t managed services. It’s risk with a monthly invoice.
We moved fast:
– Emergency cloud backup deployed
– Core infrastructure issues corrected
– Systems stabilised
– Environment brought back to a recoverable state
– Domain Admin access reduced and locked down
– All passwords rotated to strong, modern standards (20+ characters where supported)
– Previous provider access removed to eliminate ongoing risk
Within days, the business was no longer exposed.
Here’s the bigger issue.
Too many businesses choose an IT provider based on price per user.
But IT isn’t like buying a car where you can compare features on a spec sheet.
You can’t see:
– How your backups are really performing
– Whether your security is actually enforced
– If your environment is one incident away from failure
That’s why the right questions matter.
We’ve put together a simple resource:
👉 https://neveco.com.au/16-essential-questions
If your provider can’t answer these clearly and confidently — you’ve already got your answer.
And honestly, our industry needs to lift.
There should be a higher standard and more accountability, because the gap between what’s promised and what’s delivered is still far too wide.
Free guide: Discover how to choose the right IT company for your business and avoid costly mistakes.