The businesses we look after.

Tax advisers, consultants, accountants, translators and agencies. Their work is documents and email, and their reputation rides on both: a client's file cannot leak, and a mailbox cannot be the one a fraudster borrows to send a fake invoice.

What matters most: Microsoft 365 set up properly, with sign-ins protected and every device enrolled; mail that cannot be spoofed; files shared on purpose rather than by accident; and new tools such as Copilot brought in carefully, licences checked user by user.

From the files: the firm whose Teams notes would not appear, the consultancy whose website was switched off.

Brokers, agencies and building maintenance firms. Teams move between offices, viewings and sites, many of them on phones, and a lot of client data passes through email and shared folders.

What matters most: phones and laptops managed so a lost device can be locked and wiped; one tenant shared cleanly between sister companies; and backup that covers the mailboxes, not only the files.

Engineering consultants, contractors, fit-out and interiors firms. The office plans and designs, the sites build, and both depend on the same drawings, email and approvals.

What matters most: a network and Wi-Fi that are documented before anyone sits down, firewalls kept up to date, laptops that are ready on a new engineer's first morning, and large drawing files kept safe and backed up off site.

HVAC, oilfield equipment, furniture and manufacturing suppliers. Orders, quotations and supplier mail run the business; a mailbox that stops sending is a quotation that never arrives.

What matters most: mailboxes kept below their limits with archiving that runs on its own; websites and systems that send mail as the company without anyone handing out a password; and hardware supplied, set up and under warranty.

From the files: the supplier one mailbox from silence, the website that had to send mail as its company.

Freight, logistics and shipbroking firms. The day runs across time zones, on email and on the website's enquiry form, and a missed message can be a missed booking.

What matters most: enquiry forms and email that are actually delivered and checked; devices enrolled and managed wherever the team works; and a website and hosting kept patched, with backups that live somewhere other than the server itself.