Here’s a pattern that plays out in a lot of growing companies. When there were twelve of you, IT was “whoever’s good with computers.” Somebody set up the Wi-Fi, somebody else bought a few laptops on sale, and passwords lived on sticky notes. It worked fine. Then the team hit forty, half of them started working from home on Fridays, and suddenly the video calls kept dropping, the shared drive was a mess, and nobody could remember who had access to what.
An IT health check is a structured look at your technology before those cracks turn into something expensive. It usually covers five things: the network, who has access to what, backups, the computers themselves, and the pile of software subscriptions that’s quietly built up. You can run one with your own people, or bring in a provider of managed IT Services in Burlington or wherever you’re based to do it with fresh eyes. Either way, it’s much cheaper than finding the problems during an outage.
Picture Sanjay. He’s made up, but he’s a pretty common type: managing partner at an accounting firm in Burlington that’s grown from twelve staff to about forty in three years. Tax season is coming, and he has a nagging feeling the IT won’t survive it. Let’s walk through what a health check would turn up for him.
Why bother, if nothing’s broken yet?
Because the problems are usually piling up out of sight. Every quick fix, every “we’ll replace that laptop next year,” and every setting someone changed and never wrote down adds a little to what IT people call technical debt. On its own, each one is harmless. Together, they make systems fragile, and the moment you add ten new people, something gives.
When it does give, it hits everyone at once. Sales can’t get into the CRM. Accounts can’t send invoices. Support can’t pull up a customer’s history. For Sanjay’s firm, an afternoon of downtime in April means missed filing deadlines and some very unhappy clients. Regular reviews swap that kind of scramble for planned, boring maintenance, and boring is exactly what you want from IT.
Area 1: The network
Start with how data actually moves around the office: between people’s computers, the cloud apps everyone uses, and any local storage.
Growing teams put a surprising load on an ordinary business internet connection. Add a few more video calls, cloud software syncing all day, and someone uploading big files, and the connection starts to choke. You hear it as choppy audio on a client call, which isn’t a great look for an accounting firm discussing someone’s finances.
A good review checks bandwidth, looks at how old the routers and switches are, and sees whether important traffic gets priority. Phone and video calls should get first dibs on bandwidth during work hours. The guest Wi-Fi in reception should be kept completely separate from the network your client files live on. Sanjay’s check turned up a switch in the back cupboard older than two of his junior staff. It was the reason the whole second floor dropped off every few weeks.
Area 2: Who has access to what
This is the one that keeps security people up at night. It covers user accounts, password rules, and who’s allowed into which systems.
In a small team, someone usually just sets people up by hand. That works until people start changing roles or leaving, and then accounts get forgotten. A former employee’s login sitting active in the background is an open door, and attackers specifically go looking for those. Sanjay’s review found four accounts belonging to people who’d left, one of them more than a year earlier.
The fix is to manage everyone from one central directory, so one account controls access to everything. When someone joins, they get the right access for their job automatically. When they leave, switching off that one account cuts them off from every system at once. If you’re weighing up tools for this, a checklist for choosing identity governance solutions is a good place to start.
Pair that with multi-factor authentication, ideally a phishing-resistant kind like security keys or passkeys, not codes sent by text. That matters more every year. AI tools now write convincing, typo-free phishing emails in seconds, so you can’t count on staff spotting the dodgy grammar anymore.
Area 3: Backups that actually work
This is the area where businesses most often think they’re covered and aren’t.
A lot of companies treat cloud file syncing, like OneDrive or Dropbox, as their backup. It isn’t really one. Syncing copies whatever happens on your computer straight to the cloud, which means that if a file gets corrupted, or ransomware scrambles everything, the damaged version syncs up within seconds. Real protection means proper backups taken at set points in time, of whole systems and databases, kept somewhere separate.
The strongest setups also make backups “immutable.” They’re stored in a way that means nobody, not even an admin account and not even ransomware that has grabbed admin rights, can delete or change them for a set period. It’s sometimes called WORM storage, short for write once, read many.
And test your backups. Actually try restoring a system and time how long it takes. A backup you’ve never restored is really just a hope. This is also an area where outside help earns its keep, since a good managed provider will run those restore tests for you and tell you honestly how long recovery would take.
Area 4: The computers themselves
Next, look at every laptop, desktop, and company phone: how old it is, whether it’s getting security updates, and whether it’s still up to the job.
Old machines cost more than they seem to. They freeze, they struggle with modern video and collaboration apps, and they generate a steady drip of help-desk tickets that eat into everyone’s day. Then there’s security. Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 in October 2025, so any machine still running it without paid Extended Security Updates stopped getting security fixes. Businesses can buy those updates for up to three years, but it’s a stopgap, not a plan. A couple of forgotten Windows 10 laptops can put the whole network at risk.
Most businesses do best with a three-to-five-year replacement cycle, swapping out a fixed share of machines every year. That spreads the cost evenly, so you don’t get hit with a huge bill when everything dies at once. Central management tools let you keep an eye on every device’s health, storage, and battery from one screen.
Area 5: The software pile
Last up: every app and subscription the business pays for.
As teams grow, departments tend to sort out their own problems by signing up for whatever tool solves today’s headache, often on someone’s company card. A year later, you’re paying for two project-management apps, three e-signature tools and cloud storage nobody’s touched since 2023.
AI tools are the newest and fastest-growing part of this. Staff sign up for ChatGPT, transcription apps, and AI writing assistants on their own, frequently on free personal accounts, and sometimes they paste client data straight into them. For an accounting firm, that’s a real problem. It’s worth knowing how often employees paste company secrets into ChatGPT before deciding which AI tools to approve and which to block.
All that scattered software also causes data fragmentation: client notes, files, and records spread across apps that don’t talk to each other or to your main systems. That makes information harder to find and much harder to protect.
The audit itself is fairly simple. Line up who’s actually using each tool against what you’re paying for each month. Cancel the unused seats, drop the duplicates, and push people towards a smaller set of core tools. You’ll usually save money and make training new staff easier at the same time.
Before and after, at a glance
| Area | Typical “we’ll deal with it later” setup | After a health check | What it helps with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Network | Old routers, dropped calls, guest and staff on one network | Separated networks, calls and key apps prioritised | Clearer calls, faster cloud apps |
| Access | Accounts set up by hand, old logins left active | One central directory, role-based access, phishing-resistant MFA | Fewer security gaps, quicker onboarding |
| Backups | File syncing treated as backup | Immutable, automated backups with regular restore tests | Much faster, more reliable recovery |
| Computers | Fixed only when they break | 3–5 year refresh cycle with health monitoring | Steadier spending, fewer slowdowns |
| Software | Overlapping tools bought by each team, unvetted AI apps | Regular audits, right-sized licences, approved AI tools | Lower costs, data in fewer places |
How to actually run one
You don’t need a giant project. Four steps will get most businesses there.
First, make a list of everything: every computer, network box, cloud service, and software subscription, with how old it is, when the warranty runs out, and who uses it. It’s tedious, and it’s also the foundation for everything else.
Then talk to the people who use it all. Ask each team where things slow down, what keeps breaking, and what drives them mad. Real complaints point you at real problems, and they stop you buying a shiny new tool that doesn’t fix anything.
Next, rank what you’ve found by how much damage it could do. An admin account with no MFA or a backup drive that’s failing gets fixed this week. Consolidating a few overlapping apps can wait for next quarter.
Finally, put a quarterly review in the calendar. Technology keeps changing as the business grows, so check uptime, see whether people are actually using the tools you pay for, and adjust as you go.
For Sanjay, the health check took a couple of weeks. The ancient switch got replaced, the four old accounts were shut down, the backups got their first proper restore test, and six unused subscriptions were cancelled. Tax season was still busy. The IT, for once, wasn’t part of the stress.
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