5 IT Mistakes Small Irish Businesses Make (And How to Avoid Them)
After 18 years helping Irish businesses with their IT, I see the same mistakes come up again and again. The good news is every single one of them is easy to fix.
Mistake 1
No backups. "Sure it's all in the cloud." I hear this constantly. But Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are not backup solutions. If ransomware hits, if someone accidentally deletes a shared folder, if an employee leaves and wipes their account — that data can be gone. A proper cloud backup costs a few euro per user per month. Compared to losing years of business data, it's the best money you'll ever spend.
Mistake 2
Everyone shares one password. The company email password written on a Post-it stuck to the monitor. The shared Netflix login that's the same as the company bank account password. I wish I was joking, but I've seen this in real businesses across Ireland. Every person should have their own login. Use a password manager. It takes 30 minutes to set up and it eliminates this risk entirely.
Mistake 3
No MFA on business accounts. This is the big one. Multi-factor authentication stops the vast majority of account breaches. It takes 5 minutes to enable. There is genuinely no good reason not to have it on. If you only do one thing after reading this article, let it be this.
Mistake 4
Using personal email for business. Your clients see john.murphy@gmail.com and they don't know if you're a legitimate business or a lad in a shed. A proper business email costs about a fiver a month and instantly makes you look more professional. Plus you own it — unlike your ISP email that vanishes when you switch broadband provider.
Mistake 5
No plan for when things go wrong. Hard drive dies. Laptop gets stolen. Account gets hacked. What do you do? Who do you call? Most small businesses don't have an answer until it happens. Having an IT person you can WhatsApp at 9pm on a Tuesday is not a luxury — it's the difference between a minor inconvenience and a business-threatening disaster.
Every one of these is fixable in a day. If you recognise your business in any of these, drop me a message and we'll get you sorted.
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