Insights for Business Leaders

Scalable IT solutions for growing Abbotsford businesses are not optional. They’re survival. Because the moment your network crashes during a client presentation, your shared drive locks out half the office, and your "IT guy" is buried under 30 open tickets, your best quarter ever turns into your worst week.

Companies that outgrow their technology don’t just slow down. They break.

Growth is supposed to be the goal. But when your infrastructure was built for 15 people and you’re now running 35, every system becomes a ticking time bomb. The companies that scale successfully plan their technology around where they’re going, not where they have been.

The Breaking Point Every Growing Company Hits

Most small businesses build their IT the same way. They buy what they need right now, fix problems as they pop up, and assume everything will hold together. That works at 10 employees. By 25 or 30, the cracks are impossible to ignore.

According to the ITIC 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey, 84% of firms cite security as their number one cause of downtime, followed closely by human error and inadequate hardware. For a growing company, those three triggers aren’t random events. They’re the predictable consequences of infrastructure that was never designed to scale.

Here’s what typically breaks first when a company doubles in size:

• Network bandwidth and speed. The internet connection and internal network that handled 12 users chokes under 30. File transfers slow to a crawl. Cloud applications lag. Video calls drop.
• Email and communication systems. Misconfigured accounts, inconsistent permissions, and overwhelmed inboxes create security gaps and lost productivity.
• User access and identity management. Without role-based access controls, every new hire introduces a potential security vulnerability that nobody is tracking.
• Backup and disaster recovery. Systems designed for a smaller data footprint fail to keep pace with the volume a growing team generates daily.

A study cited by Kinect Communications found that 80% of businesses experience at least one outage annually, and 25% of small businesses close within a year after a major outage. The infrastructure that got you here won’t get you there.

Why Growth Becomes the Threat

It sounds counterintuitive. How can success be dangerous? Because growth without infrastructure planning creates compound failures. Every new employee adds devices, accounts, software licenses, and data to a system that was never built to handle them.

The Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report paints an alarming picture for small and medium-sized businesses. Ransomware was present in 88% of SMB breaches, compared to just 39% at larger organizations. The reason is straightforward. Larger companies invest in scalable IT solutions for growing Abbotsford businesses and beyond. Smaller companies often wait until something breaks.

The Domino Effect of Undersized Infrastructure

When one system fails in an undersized network, it rarely stays contained. A single server overload can cascade into application failures, data access issues, and communication blackouts across the entire company.

The Verizon report also revealed that 60% of all breaches involved the human element, including employees clicking phishing links and falling for social engineering. In a rapidly growing company where onboarding is rushed and security training is skipped, that percentage climbs even higher.

Think about what happens when you hire five people in a month without a standardized IT onboarding process. Passwords get written on sticky notes. Permissions are copied from another user's profile without review. Devices connect to the network without endpoint protection. Each shortcut opens a door for an attacker.

The Seven Systems That Fail Between 15 and 50 Employees

Understanding where the breaking points are is the first step toward protecting your company. Every business is different, but the failure pattern is remarkably consistent.

1. Your Firewall and Perimeter Security

The entry-level firewall you bought when you opened your office was designed for a fraction of your current traffic. As your team and devices multiply, that firewall becomes a bottleneck instead of a barrier. The Verizon 2025 DBIR showed a 34% increase in attackers exploiting vulnerabilities to gain initial access, and outdated perimeter devices are among the easiest targets.

2. Your Wi-Fi and Internal Network

Slow Wi-Fi isn’t just annoying. It’s a productivity killer. More critically, consumer-grade or aging access points often lack the segmentation capabilities needed to separate guest traffic from business-critical systems. When your entire team shares one flat network, a single compromised device can expose everything.

3. Your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace Configuration

Most growing companies use Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, but very few configure them correctly. Default settings leave security gaps in email filtering, sharing permissions, and administrative access. Without proper configuration, these platforms become the front door for credential theft. The Verizon report found that stolen credentials accounted for 22% of all breaches in the 2025 dataset.

4. Your Backup and Recovery Systems

If your systems went down right now, how quickly could you restore everything? For most growing companies, the honest answer is "I don't know." Backup systems designed for a smaller operation can’t handle the data volume a 30 or 40 person company generates.

5. Your Endpoint Protection

Every laptop, phone, and tablet connecting to your network is an endpoint. As your team grows, so does the number of endpoints you need to monitor and protect. This is one of the most overlooked reasons that scalable IT solutions for growing Abbotsford businesses require more than basic antivirus software. Modern threats require endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions that use behavioral analysis to identify suspicious activity in real time.

6. Your IT Documentation and Processes

This is the invisible failure. When your IT setup lives in one person's head, your entire business depends on that person's availability. Growing companies need documented processes for onboarding, offboarding, password management, and incident response. Without them, every staff change creates chaos.

7. Your Help Desk and Support Capacity

One IT generalist can support a small office. But when your team doubles and the ticket volume triples, response times collapse. Critical issues get buried behind password resets. Strategic projects stall. Your IT person burns out, and the cycle accelerates.

The Blueprint for IT That Scales Without Breaking

Building infrastructure that scales isn’t about buying the most expensive equipment. It’s about building systems that can expand without breaking. The distinction is critical.

A scalable infrastructure includes these core elements:

• Cloud-first architecture. Cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure and AWS scale on demand. You add users and resources as needed without purchasing and installing new hardware every time you hire.
• Layered cybersecurity. A multi-layered security stack includes firewalls, endpoint protection, DNS filtering, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and ongoing phishing simulation training. Each layer reinforces the others.
• Centralized identity management. Role-based access controls ensure that every employee has access to exactly what they need and nothing more. When someone leaves, their access is revoked immediately across all systems.
• Proactive monitoring and management. Scalable systems are monitored 24/7 with automated alerts that catch problems before they cause outages. This is the difference between reactive IT and proactive IT.

According to the ITIC 2024 survey, 90% of businesses now require a minimum of 99.99% uptime, which translates to less than 53 minutes of unplanned downtime per year. Achieving that standard requires infrastructure that’s designed for growth from day one.

The Cost of Waiting vs. the Cost of Planning

Business owners often delay infrastructure upgrades because the current system "still works." But "still works" is not the same as "ready for growth."

The Verizon 2025 DBIR highlighted that third-party involvement in breaches doubled to 30% in a single year. Supply chain attacks, compromised software vendors, and insecure integrations are all risks that multiply as a business grows and adds more tools to its tech stack.

Scalable IT solutions for growing Abbotsford businesses are designed to absorb that complexity without creating new vulnerabilities.

Consider the difference between two approaches:

• Reactive approach. Wait for something to break. Call an IT provider in a panic. Pay emergency rates. Lose productivity while the problem is diagnosed and repaired. Hope it doesn’t happen again.
• Proactive approach. Conduct a technology assessment before growth accelerates. Build infrastructure that scales with your business plan. Monitor systems continuously. Address issues before they become outages.

The companies that survive their growth phase are the ones that choose the second path.

How to Know If Your IT Is Ready to Scale

If you’re planning to grow your team, enter new markets, or increase your service capacity, your IT needs to be evaluated now. Not after the first outage. Not after the first breach. Now.

Here are the warning signs that your infrastructure is falling behind:

• Employees regularly complain about slow systems, dropped connections, or difficulty accessing files.
• Your IT support person or team is constantly firefighting instead of working on strategic projects.
• You have no documented disaster recovery plan, or the plan has never been tested.
• New employees wait days for their accounts, devices, and access to be fully configured.
• You’re unsure who has administrative access to critical systems.

If any of those statements are true, your technology is already a liability. Investing in scalable IT solutions for growing Abbotsford businesses is not a future consideration. It’s something your business needs to address this quarter.

Build for Where You’re Going

Growth should accelerate your business, not expose it. The companies in the Fraser Valley that scale successfully are the ones that treat their IT infrastructure as a strategic asset, not an afterthought.

A qualified managed IT provider will assess your current environment, identify the breaking points before they fail, and build a technology roadmap aligned with your business goals. That means quarterly business reviews, proactive security monitoring, and a support model that scales with you.

Your best quarter shouldn’t be followed by your worst outage. Plan your technology for the company you are building, not the company you were.

Sources

1. ITIC, "2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey," itic-corp.com
2. Verizon, "2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR)," verizon.com
3. Verizon, "2025 DBIR SMB Snapshot," verizon.com
4. Kinect Communications, "The True Cost of Downtime: Financial Impact on Your Business," kinectcommunications.com

It’s a common scene in many offices: the accidental IT person. They were hired to handle your marketing or manage your sales, but because they happen to know how to fix a printer or reset a password, they’ve become the unofficial tech support.

While this might seem like a quick fix, it’s actually a silent growth killer for your business. Here is why relying on the office tech whiz is holding you back; and how a professional approach can fuel your success.

Silence is rarely golden—it’s usually a warning sign. Imagine flying a plane through a storm with a blindfold on; that’s exactly what it feels like to run a modern enterprise without a robust monitoring strategy. Whether you're scaling a global cloud infrastructure or managing a delicate web of customer data, reporting and alarms are the digital nervous system that keeps your operation alive. They are the difference between discovering a system failure via a frantic 2 a.m. client call and catching a glitch before it ever touches a customer.

It is tempting to call the family tech genius when your office Wi-Fi acts up. Whether it is a niece who builds gaming rigs or a friend who is good with computers, leaning on a hobbyist for business infrastructure seems like a great way to save a few bucks.

In reality, it is one of the most expensive mistakes a business owner can make. Here is why mixing family favors with professional IT is a recipe for disaster.

Chances are pretty good that you know someone—a coworker, friend, or relative—who seems pretty confident that they know their way around technology. Maybe it’s your niece, who was the one to set up your Wi-Fi and spends her time on her self-constructed gaming PC. It kind of makes sense to lean on her for some tech advice for the office, too… doesn’t it?

The short answer: absolutely not.

While your niece may have a bright future ahead of her in the IT industry, there are numerous reasons why relying on her in lieu of a professional is a terrible, self-destructive idea.

A business owner says, "We already have an IT person, so we're good." And quietly, that single sentence is costing some of those companies far more than they realize. Co-managed IT services for Fraser Valley small businesses are solving a problem that most owners don’t even know they have, until something goes seriously wrong.

The One-Person IT Trap

Hiring an in-house IT person feels like the responsible move. You have someone on-site. You know their name. You can call them directly. It makes sense, especially when your business is growing and technology is becoming more central to how you operate every day.

But no single person can be an expert in everything.

Modern IT demands expertise in cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, compliance, networking, backup and disaster recovery, vendor management, and strategic planning. Expecting one employee to cover all of that, often while also handling everyday helpdesk requests, is not a strategy. It’s a gamble.

And the odds aren’t in your favor.

What Happens When Your IT Person Hits a Wall

According to a 2024 report from ISC2, 67% of organizations reported some form of shortage of cybersecurity professionals. Even organizations that have IT staff on payroll aren’t immune to this gap.

The Fortinet 2024 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report found that 58% of companies say that insufficient skills and a lack of properly trained IT and security staff are among the prime causes of breaches.

Read that again. More than half of companies that experienced a breach pointed to their own team's skill gaps as a contributing factor. Not a lack of technology. Not a lack of budget. A lack of expertise that one generalist employee simply can’t fill on their own.

Here are the specific coverage gaps that emerge most often when small businesses rely on a single IT person:

• Cybersecurity monitoring and incident response
• Cloud environment management and optimization
• Compliance readiness for industry regulations
• Strategic IT planning and technology roadmaps
• After-hours and weekend emergency support

Your IT person is likely talented and hardworking. That’s not the issue. The issue is scope. One person was never designed to cover all of this alone.

The Burnout Problem Nobody Talks About

There’s another dimension to this that rarely surfaces until it’s too late.

42% of tech workers say they’re considering leaving their jobs within the next six months. In the IT industry specifically, burnout isn’t a fringe concern. 82% of employees in the tech industry feel close to burnout.

When your entire IT operation depends on one person, you’re not just managing a skills gap. You’re managing a retention risk.

What happens the day your IT person resigns? Or gets sick for two weeks? Or burns out and simply stops performing at the level you hired them for? If your answer involves a lot of uncertainty, that is exactly the vulnerability that co-managed IT services for Fraser Valley small businesses are designed to eliminate.

Your business should never be one resignation away from an IT crisis. But for many Fraser Valley companies right now, that is precisely where things stand.

What Co-Managed IT Actually Means

Co-managed IT isn’t about replacing your internal IT person. It’s about surrounding them with everything they can’t be on their own.

Think of it this way. A general contractor is excellent at their trade. But on a large job, they bring in electricians, plumbers, and specialists. Not because the general contractor is failing, but because the project demands it. Co-managed IT works the same way.

Here is what a co-managed model typically adds to your existing IT team:

• 24/7/365 helpdesk support that extends far beyond business hours
• Enterprise-grade cybersecurity tools including SOC monitoring, endpoint protection, and DNS filtering
• Strategic oversight through Quarterly Business Reviews to align technology with company goals
• Proactive network monitoring to catch problems before they cause downtime
• Compliance support to help meet industry and regulatory requirements

Your internal IT person handles the day-to-day. The co-managed partner handles the depth, the breadth, and the after-hours coverage they simply can’t provide alone.

The Hidden Cost of Staying the Course

One of the most common objections Fraser Valley business owners raise is cost. Co-managed IT is an added expense, and when you already have someone on payroll, it can feel redundant.

But consider what you’re actually paying for when you rely exclusively on a solo IT employee.

The Cost of Downtime

Every hour your systems are offline has a measurable impact on productivity, customer experience, and revenue. Managed IT services offer round-the-clock monitoring, ensuring 99.99% network uptime and proactive issue resolution. A single IT employee working business hours simply can’t match that coverage window.

The Cost of a Breach

Two-thirds of organizations face additional risks because of cybersecurity skills shortages. When your only IT resource lacks deep security expertise, that gap becomes an open door for attackers. Fraser Valley businesses aren’t exempt from this risk. Ransomware and phishing attacks don’t discriminate by geography.

The Cost of Falling Behind

Technology doesn’t stand still. Cloud platforms evolve. Security threats change. Compliance requirements shift. 95% of organizations have at least one or more cybersecurity skills needs, with AI security and cloud security topping the list. Keeping one generalist employee current across every area of modern IT is nearly impossible without external support.

Why Co-Managed IT Is Growing Rapidly

This isn’t a niche concept. The market is moving clearly in this direction.

Almost 90% of SMBs currently use a managed service provider to handle some of their IT needs or are actively considering it. Businesses across North America have recognized what Fraser Valley companies are beginning to discover: combining internal staff with external expertise produces better outcomes than either option alone.

Approximately 49% of businesses outsource at least some IT functions, allowing key personnel to focus on core business activities while benefiting from specialized skills such as cybersecurity and disaster recovery.

The companies leading in their industries aren’t choosing between in-house IT and a managed partner. They’re choosing both.

What to Look for in a Co-Managed IT Partner

Not every managed IT firm is built for co-managed relationships. Some are designed primarily for fully outsourced IT, and they may not have the tools or mindset to partner well with your existing team.

Transparency and Communication

Your internal IT person needs a partner, not a competitor. The right co-managed provider will work alongside your employee, share knowledge openly, and fill in the gaps rather than undermine the person already doing the job.

Depth of Security Capability

Cybersecurity is non-negotiable. Look for a partner that brings enterprise-grade tools to the table: SOC monitoring, multi-factor authentication, phishing simulations, endpoint protection, and DNS filtering built into every plan, not treated as optional add-ons.

Strategic Alignment

Co-managed IT shouldn’t just be about fixing things when they break. Quarterly Business Reviews and technology roadmaps ensure your IT infrastructure is actively supporting your business goals rather than just keeping up with them.

Proven Response Times

A co-managed partner should have documented and verifiable response time commitments. Ask for specifics. "We respond quickly" isn’t a performance standard. Ask what their average emergency response time is and how they measure it.

The Right Time to Have This Conversation

If your business is growing, your IT environment is getting more complex. If you handle any sensitive client data, your compliance obligations are real. If your current IT person is stretched thin, the risk is already accumulating.

Co-managed IT services for Fraser Valley small businesses are not a last resort for companies whose IT has failed. They’re the structure that forward-thinking business owners put in place before something goes wrong.

The Fraser Valley business community is competitive. Legal firms, accounting practices, construction companies, and professional services organizations across Langley, Surrey, and Abbotsford are all making technology decisions right now that will determine how well they perform over the next three to five years.

The question isn’t whether you need more than one person managing your IT. The question is whether you’re willing to wait for a crisis to prove it.

Sources:

• ISC2. (2024). ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study. https://www.isc2.org/Insights/2024/10/ISC2-2024-Cybersecurity-Workforce-Study
• ISC2. (2025). 2025 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study. https://www.isc2.org/Insights/2025/12/2025-ISC2-Cybersecurity-Workforce-Study
• Fortinet. (2024). 2024 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Global Research Report. https://www.fortinet.com/content/dam/fortinet/assets/reports/2024-cybersecurity-skills-gap-report.pdf
• JumpCloud. (2025). Key MSP Statistics and Trends to Know for 2025. https://jumpcloud.com/blog/msp-statistics-trends
• Market.us. (2025). Managed Services Provider Statistics and Facts. https://scoop.market.us/managed-services-statistics/
• CIO. (2025). Burnout: A chronic epidemic in the IT industry. https://www.cio.com/article/657960/burnout-an-it-epidemic-in-the-making.html
• Spill. (2024). 64 workplace burnout statistics you need to know for 2024. https://www.spill.chat/mental-health-statistics/workplace-burnout-statistics
• World Economic Forum. (2024). The cybersecurity industry has an urgent talent shortage. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/04/cybersecurity-industry-talent-shortage-new-report/

Your business runs on Microsoft 365. Emails, files, calendars, Teams calls. It all flows through one platform every single day. But here’s the uncomfortable reality about Microsoft 365 security settings for Burnaby businesses: the default configuration Microsoft gives you was built for convenience, not protection. And cybercriminals are counting on you not knowing the difference.

Microsoft 365 is functional out of the box. It’s not secure out of the box. The security tools are built in and available, but most of them are not turned on or configured properly unless someone deliberately does it. That gap between "available" and "activated" is exactly where attackers operate. And for small and medium sized businesses across Burnaby and the Lower Mainland, this blind spot is costing them everything.

The Default Settings Trap That Catches Almost Everyone

Microsoft designed its default settings to get businesses up and running fast. Collaboration tools work immediately. File sharing is frictionless. Email flows without interruption. But that speed comes at a cost that most business owners never realize until something goes wrong.

Default configurations often leave legacy authentication protocols like POP and IMAP active. These older protocols don’t support multi-factor authentication, which means they create a backdoor that completely bypasses your login security. Attackers know this. They actively scan for businesses still running these protocols because it’s the easiest way in.

Your Security Tools Are There but Nobody Turned Them On

Think of it this way. Microsoft hands you a building with a state of the art alarm system, reinforced doors, and security cameras in every hallway. But none of it is plugged in. The building looks secure from the outside. Inside, every door is unlocked and every camera is off.

The 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that ransomware was present in 88% of breaches involving small and medium sized businesses. That’s not a typo. While large enterprises saw ransomware in 39% of their breaches, SMBs absorbed the overwhelming majority of the damage. The reason is straightforward: smaller organizations typically have weaker security configurations, slower patch cycles, and fewer resources dedicated to IT security.

For companies relying on Microsoft 365 security settings for Burnaby businesses to protect sensitive client data, these defaults are a ticking clock.

The Five Settings Most Businesses Never Configure

Understanding where the gaps exist is the first step toward closing them. These are the Microsoft 365 security settings that consistently go unconfigured in small business environments:

• Multi-factor authentication left optional. MFA is available in every Microsoft 365 plan, but it’s not enforced by default for all users. Microsoft has reported that more than 99.9% of compromised accounts didn’t have MFA enabled. One setting. That is all it takes to block the vast majority of credential theft attacks.
• External sharing set to "anyone with a link." SharePoint and OneDrive default sharing settings often allow files to be accessed by anyone who receives a link, with no login required. Confidential documents can be forwarded, intercepted, or posted publicly without your knowledge.
• Too many Global Administrator accounts. During initial setup, businesses commonly assign Global Admin access to multiple people and never revisit it. Every Global Admin account is a high value target. If even one is compromised, an attacker has full control of your entire tenant.
• Email authentication protocols not configured. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are email authentication standards that prevent attackers from spoofing your domain. Many businesses never set them up, which means criminals can send phishing emails that appear to come from your CEO.
• Audit logging and alerts turned off. Without audit logs and security alerts enabled, suspicious activity like unusual login locations, mass file downloads, or new forwarding rules goes completely unnoticed until the damage is done.

These aren’t advanced enterprise concerns. These are foundational settings that every business using Microsoft 365 should have configured from day one.

Why Burnaby Businesses Are Prime Targets

There’s a persistent myth that cybercriminals only go after large corporations. The data tells a very different story.

According to the 2025 Verizon DBIR, small and medium sized businesses are being targeted nearly four times more frequently than large organizations. The logic is simple from an attacker's perspective. It’s far easier to extract smaller amounts from twenty vulnerable businesses than to breach one company that has a dedicated security operations center.

Canadian businesses are not immune to this trend. A 2024 BDC survey found that 73% of Canadian small businesses have experienced a cybersecurity incident, ranging from phishing attempts to full denial of service attacks. Meanwhile, 61% reported experiencing a phishing attempt via email, the exact attack vector that misconfigured Microsoft 365 settings leave wide open.

Microsoft 365 security settings for Burnaby businesses are especially critical because the industries concentrated in this region, including professional services, legal, accounting, and construction, handle sensitive client information daily. A single breach doesn’t just cost money. It destroys client trust and can trigger compliance violations.

The Phishing Problem Is Getting Worse

Microsoft was the most impersonated brand in phishing campaigns in 2024, appearing in over 51% of all phishing scams worldwide. Attackers create login pages that look identical to the real Microsoft 365 sign in screen. When an employee enters their credentials on a fake page, the attacker walks right into your environment.

Without proper anti-phishing policies configured in Microsoft Defender for Office 365, these emails land in inboxes looking completely legitimate. Safe Links, Safe Attachments, and impersonation protection are all available within the platform. Most businesses have never turned them on.

What Properly Configured Microsoft 365 Security Actually Looks Like

The gap between a vulnerable Microsoft 365 environment and a hardened one is not about buying more software. It’s about configuring what you already have.

A properly secured Microsoft 365 tenant includes:

• MFA enforced for every user account, not just administrators
• Legacy authentication protocols disabled entirely
• Conditional Access policies that evaluate login context, including device, location, and risk level
• External sharing restricted to authenticated users with expiration dates on shared links
• Microsoft Defender for Office 365 configured with Safe Links, Safe Attachments, and anti-phishing policies active

Microsoft's own research confirms that MFA alone reduces the risk of account compromise by 99.2%. That single configuration change eliminates almost all credential based attacks. Yet according to research cited in the 2025 CoreView State of Microsoft 365 Security report, only 41% of organizations have implemented MFA effectively across their environments.

The remaining 59% are operating with the digital equivalent of a screen door on a bank vault. Every day those settings stay unconfigured is another day attackers have a clear path into your environment. And once they’re inside, they move fast. Forwarding rules get created. Data gets exfiltrated. Ransomware gets deployed. All before anyone notices something is wrong.

The businesses that take Microsoft 365 security settings for Burnaby businesses seriously are the ones that treat configuration as an ongoing process, not a one time setup task. Settings drift over time as employees are added, apps are integrated, and Microsoft releases updates. Quarterly reviews of your security posture are not a luxury. They’re a necessity.

The Business Cost of Getting This Wrong

The consequences of misconfigured Microsoft 365 settings extend far beyond the initial breach.

The 2025 Verizon DBIR reported that ransomware attacks rose by 37% year over year and were present in 44% of all confirmed data breaches globally. For small businesses specifically, the operational fallout is devastating. Systems go offline. Client data gets exposed. Recovery takes weeks, not days.

Here is what a breach typically triggers for a small business:

• Immediate loss of access to email, files, and collaboration tools
• Regulatory notification requirements if client data is compromised
• Cyber insurance claims that may be denied if basic security controls like MFA were not in place
• Reputational damage that drives clients to competitors
• Legal exposure from failure to protect sensitive information

The 2025 Verizon DBIR also found that credential abuse accounted for 22% of all breaches, and vulnerability exploitation accounted for another 20%. Both attack vectors are directly addressed by properly configuring Microsoft 365 security settings for Burnaby businesses.

How to Know If Your Settings Are Actually Configured

Microsoft provides a built in tool called Secure Score that evaluates your current security posture and recommends specific actions to improve it. It’s free, it’s already in your admin portal, and most businesses have never looked at it.

Secure Score examines your configurations across identity, data protection, devices, applications, and infrastructure. It then benchmarks your environment against similar organizations and prioritizes recommendations by impact. Most businesses we work with are shocked by how low their initial score is, even when they assumed everything was properly set up.

The tool isn’t a replacement for professional security management. But it gives you an honest snapshot of where you stand today. And for businesses that have never audited their Microsoft 365 configuration, that snapshot is often the wake up call that drives real change.

If you do nothing else after reading this article, take these three steps this week:

• Log into your Microsoft 365 admin center and check your Secure Score
• Verify that MFA is enforced for every user, especially administrators
• Review your external sharing settings in SharePoint and OneDrive

These three actions alone will close the most dangerous gaps in your environment. They cost nothing, they take less than an hour, and they dramatically reduce your exposure.

Stop Assuming Microsoft Has You Covered

Microsoft gives you the tools. They don’t configure them for you. That distinction is the single biggest security risk facing small and medium sized businesses running Microsoft 365 today.

The businesses that avoid breaches are not the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones that took the time to properly configure their Microsoft 365 security settings. For Burnaby businesses handling sensitive client data across professional services, legal, accounting, and construction, getting this right is not optional. It’s the foundation of everything else.

If you’re not sure whether your Microsoft 365 security settings for Burnaby businesses are properly configured, Coleman Technologies offers a comprehensive security assessment that identifies exactly where your gaps are and what it takes to close them. Call (604) 513-9428 or book a courtesy 30 minute consultation at colemantechnologies.com to find out where you stand.

Sources:

1. Verizon, "2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR)," April 2025: verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir/
2. Microsoft, "Security at Your Organization: MFA Statistics," Microsoft Partner Center: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/security/security-at-your-organization
3. Microsoft, "One Simple Action You Can Take to Prevent 99.9% of Account Attacks," Microsoft Security Blog: microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2019/08/20/one-simple-action-you-can-take-to-prevent-99-9-percent-of-account-attacks/
4. Microsoft, "Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2023": microsoft.com/en/security/security-insider/microsoft-digital-defense-report-2023
5. CoreView and Help Net Security, "Why Your Microsoft 365 Setup Might Be More Vulnerable Than You Think," July 2025: helpnetsecurity.com/2025/07/14/microsoft-365-attack-surface/
6. BDC (Business Development Bank of Canada), "Survey of Cybersecurity and Canadian SMEs," September 2024: bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/blog/cyberattacks-small-businesses-remain-denial
7. Hunto AI, "60+ Phishing Attack Statistics: Insights for 2026": hunto.ai/blog/phishing-attack-statistics/

Let me ask you something: how well does your current IT support function?

If your first instinct is to say something vaguely positive, like “good” or “fine,” you’re probably missing out on significant benefits that could come from a more immersive and fleshed-out service delivery, rather than a stopgap meant to preserve the status quo. If your provider has never asked you about the future and your goals for it, it may be time to seek what else is out there.

It feels good to use tools you’re familiar with, but there comes a time when old tools start to hold you back. You might start to see unexpected costs that only surface over time. Let’s take a look at how you can know when it’s time to update your business’ tech and some of the hidden costs associated with not updating it.

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Technology allows businesses to leverage high-impact practices, but only if that technology works the way it’s supposed to. Even simple issues with network connectivity problems, outdated technology, and cybersecurity can impact operations. The key to a successful technology deployment is understanding where potential disruptions could occur and taking measures to proactively address them ahead of time.

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Thankfully, remote IT support, such as that offered through managed services, is now available. This is a game-changer for small to medium-sized businesses. Let's explore the benefits of remote IT support.

Technology is a major pain point for just about all businesses, whether you’re a small mom-and-pop store or a medium-sized (and quickly growing) name in your community. You’ll always have the technology to upkeep, from computers and servers to software solutions or point-of-sale registers. This month, we want to discuss how managed IT solutions can help you maximize your resources by offering a simple, easy, and cost-effective alternative to hiring multiple in-house technicians.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face the challenge of managing complex IT systems with very limited resources. Enter managed service providers, or MSPs, the guardians of IT that can help your business stay ahead of the game. An MSP's approach to IT support delivery offers many benefits that traditional IT support and even an in-house team might struggle to match.

Let's delve into three compelling reasons why our innovative approach is best for your IT support needs, especially if you want to scale up and streamline operations.

We love to highlight how technology helps businesses thrive, particularly small and medium-sized businesses with a lot of growth potential but limited by their budgets. This is why we provide SMBs with managed IT services specifically designed to drive business growth. If you have yet to consider outsourcing your IT needs, you could be missing out on a golden opportunity to alleviate many of the pain points your organization suffers from on a daily basis.

Among IT professionals, an acronym is sometimes used when discussing certain issues and challenges: “PEBKAC,” or Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. In other words, user error. 

The entire premise of managed IT services is that they can save your business money, but in what specific ways does working with us make your budget more predictable? It’s really quite simple, and it encompasses three primary pillars: an established level of service, proactive maintenance and management, and the reliability and access to expertise that might otherwise put a stopper on your business’ potential.

All organizations rely on their information systems to be consistently available when required, with some businesses being unable to function without them. When these systems undergo necessary maintenance, such as software patches, it can pose challenges for employees who rely on their continuous availability. In this discussion, we delve into the proactive approach to IT maintenance, exploring its strategic benefits in preventing downtime for businesses.