How We Help - IT Provider Due Diligence

Your IT provider holds administrative access to your email, files, finances and client data. That is a level of trust normally reserved for auditors and bankers, yet it is frequently granted on the strength of a friendly meeting and a monthly price.

Good due diligence takes a few hours and prevents the two most expensive outcomes: appointing a provider who cannot deliver, and becoming dependent on one you cannot leave.

• Who will actually do the work, where are they based, and what cover exists during leave or illness?
• Which skills are in-house — networking, Microsoft 365, cyber security, servers — and which are subcontracted?
• What are the written response targets by incident priority, and how is performance measured?
• How are major incidents managed, communicated and reviewed afterwards?
• What on-island attendance is included, and what is chargeable?

• How does the provider protect its own systems and the administrative accounts it uses to reach yours?
• Is multi-factor authentication enforced for every engineer, with individual named accounts rather than shared credentials?
• How is privileged access logged, reviewed and revoked when staff leave?
• How are your backups configured, and when was a restore last tested and evidenced?
• What is the provider's own incident response and breach notification commitment to you?

• Do you own your Microsoft 365 tenant, domain names, licence agreements and administrator accounts? The answer must be yes.
• Is your environment documented, and will you receive that documentation?
• What are the notice period and exit terms, and what handover is included at no extra cost?
• Are there tools or licences that would stop working if you left, and what is the plan for them?

• Precisely what is included in the monthly fee, and what is chargeable?
• How are price increases handled and notified?
• Does the provider earn margin on hardware and software it recommends, and is that disclosed?
• Is there any minimum term, and what does it buy you?

Fresh Mango Technologies will answer every question above about our own service in writing, and we will run the same review on your existing arrangement if you want an independent second opinion — including when the conclusion is that your current provider is doing a good job.

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