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Whether you’re a one-person operation or a growing business with a full team, we’re here to help. Get in touch and let’s talk about what we can do for you.
Whether you’re a one-person operation or a growing business with a full team, we’re here to help. Get in touch and let’s talk about what we can do for you.
IT support from people who know what the last week of January looks like in your office.
Your practice holds bank details, payroll data, tax records and AML files for hundreds of clients, and your clients trust an email from you more than they trust an email from almost anyone. That combination makes accountancy practices a target, and it makes a bad week in IT far more expensive for you than for most businesses. This page is about the risks that are specific to your sector, and what to have in place before the busy season rather than during it.
Accountancy practices carry three risks most businesses don’t.
You’re impersonated, not just attacked. The most damaging thing that happens to a practice is rarely a dramatic outage. It’s a compromised mailbox, sitting quietly, watching a conversation about a payment, and then sending a client updated bank details from your own domain. The client pays. They trusted you, correctly, right up until they didn’t, and the argument about who’s liable is not one anybody wants to have.
Your calendar has no slack in it. Most businesses can absorb a bad day. A practice in the last fortnight of January cannot. The same outage costs you almost nothing in June and a great deal on the 29th of January, and IT problems have a habit of surfacing under load.
You hold a regulated data set. AML client due diligence files, identity documents, payroll records, tax references. Your professional body expects it protected, the ICO expects it protected, and increasingly your professional indemnity insurer wants to know how.
For a practice, the worst case isn’t systems going down. It’s a client paying the wrong account because they trusted an email from you.
Business email compromise is the single most common serious incident we see in professional services, and accountants are a preferred target because of who they talk to about money. It doesn’t require anything sophisticated at your end to go wrong. One password reused, one login without multi-factor authentication, and someone is reading your correspondence.
The knock-on effects compound in a way that’s specific to your sector. A breach involving client financial data is reportable, it’s a professional conduct issue, it’s a PI insurance conversation, and it’s the kind of thing clients tell other clients about.
Almost all of it is preventable with controls that aren’t expensive or disruptive: multi-factor authentication enforced properly, email security that catches impersonation, protected devices, and a way of sending documents to clients that isn’t an attachment on an ordinary email. Get those right and the realistic worst case becomes an inconvenience rather than a professional problem.
Advanced protection against phishing, account takeover and the payment redirection attacks aimed specifically at practices, plus domain protection so it’s harder for anyone to send email that appears to come from you.
Encryption, enforced multi-factor authentication and access controls that match your structure, so AML files, payroll data and client records are reachable by the people who need them and nobody else. Backed by backup that covers Microsoft 365 as well as your server.
We plan around your deadlines rather than through them. Changes, upgrades and maintenance happen in the quiet months, and we know that a ticket on the 30th of January is not the same as a ticket on the 30th of June.
Two minutes, a handful of questions, and a straight answer about where the gaps are. Worth running before your next PI renewal.
We recommend Professional for accountants more often than for any other sector, and it isn’t an upsell. You hold regulated client data, you’re a named target for impersonation fraud, and you’re increasingly asked to evidence your security by larger clients and by your PI insurer. Professional gives you the strongest security stack we offer plus Cyber Essentials tools and certification support, which is the thing most practices find they need at exactly the moment it’s hardest to arrange.
It also means the email and cloud security that matters most in your sector is in place as standard rather than added on.
If you’re a small practice with simple needs, Essential covers complete cloud and email security, real Microsoft 365 backup, device security and your Microsoft 365 Business Premium licence. It’s a solid position, and moving up to Professional when a client or insurer asks is straightforward.
Whichever you choose, we’d start with a look at your practice software, your server if you still run one, and how client documents currently move between you and your clients. That last one usually turns up the quickest win.
The Professional IT Support Service is for businesses that want the best — complete IT support, the strongest security we offer, and Cyber Essentials tools and certification support all in one package. If you need to protect your reputation, meet compliance requirements, and have confidence your IT is in safe hands, this is it.
Key Features
Every package is unlimited support with no ticket caps and no per-incident charges. Rolling monthly terms are available, longer terms carry a discount, and not-for-profit pricing applies across the range.
Partners are the most targeted and the most likely to ask for an exemption. Exemptions are how practices get compromised.
Standard spam filtering catches bulk nuisance. It doesn’t catch a well written message from a lookalike domain about an invoice you were expecting.
Access to your agent services account is worth a great deal to the wrong person. It should be tightly controlled and monitored, not shared around the office.
Tax returns and ID documents as email attachments are a habit worth breaking, and clients generally appreciate a portal once it exists.
Microsoft protects the service, not your content. If your practice management database sits on a server, that needs testing as well as backing up.
Nothing gets upgraded, migrated or meaningfully altered in January. This should be written down, not assumed.
This is the part that stops most people, and it’s usually smaller than imagined.
Practice software, server, devices, licences, how documents reach clients, and what’s genuinely backed up. About an hour, no obligation, and you keep the findings.
Multi-factor authentication, email security and device protection, in that order, because that’s the order the risk sits in.
Migration and change work is planned for your quiet periods. If you come to us in December, we’ll do the urgent security work now and leave everything else until February.
Unlimited support, monitoring and patching, plus a conversation before each busy season about what needs to be ready.
Questions accountancy practices ask us
Yes, in the sense that matters: we look after the infrastructure, servers, devices, access and backups that your practice software runs on, and we work alongside the vendor’s own support rather than trying to replace it. When something breaks, you shouldn’t be the one refereeing between your IT provider and your software supplier.
It’s treated as urgent, because it is. We don’t work to fixed SLA response times, we work on priority, which means a practice mid deadline isn’t waiting behind somebody’s slow printer because a contract says four hours. We’d also want a conversation in the autumn about what needs to be solid before the season starts.
With encryption, access controls that reflect who actually needs them, enforced multi-factor authentication, and backup that’s been tested. We’ll also tell you where those records currently sit, which in a lot of practices turns out to be more places than anyone realised.
Yes. Certification is included in our Professional package, and as an NCSC Assured Service Provider and IASME certified Cyber Advisor we take you through the whole process rather than handing you a questionnaire.
Largely, yes. It’s a combination of protecting your mailboxes properly, email security that spots impersonation, and domain configuration that makes it harder for anyone to spoof your address. It’s also worth telling clients how you will and won’t communicate changes to bank details, and we can help you word that.
Not necessarily. Some practice systems genuinely run better on premise, and we support servers as well as cloud. We’ll tell you honestly whether moving would save money or just move the cost, and when the hardware is approaching the point where the decision makes itself.
Same protection, same access rules, same support. Home working at peak times is exactly when shortcuts get taken, so it’s worth having set up properly rather than improvised in January.
Yes we do, and no. Every client’s environment is separate, access is controlled per client, and our team are bound by confidentiality. If you’d like to talk that through in detail before appointing anyone, that’s a reasonable thing to ask of any supplier and we’re happy to answer it.
We look after accountancy practices and professional services firms across Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Somerset and Swindon, with remote support anywhere in the UK. We’re an NCSC Assured Service Provider, Cyber Essentials Plus certified, and ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 accredited, so the standards we ask you to meet are ones we’re audited against ourselves.
Start with an hour and an honest picture of where your practice stands. No obligation, and if the answer is that you’re in good shape, we’ll say so.
Responsive and thorough service. Excellent additional advice provided in straight forward terminology. We are extremely reliant on IT systems in this practice and WDYIT keep things running smoothly if any glitches arise. It is always very reassuring to know that things are being monitored and backed up in the background should the worst happen. It’s definitely worth having a chat with Adam to see what he and the team can do for you.