Are you held prisoner by your IT person? Here’s a question you’ve probably never thought about: If your IT person went away, would you know where all the passwords, data, software licenses and disks, key codes, and other important information were stored? Do you know how to log into your server? Do you know the passwords to all your employee’s workstations? Do you know where your offsite data is stored and how to access it? Is your network documented so that another IT person could come in and pickup where they left off? If not, your IT person is holding you prisoner.

Are You Held Prisoner?

If they are doing a good job, you might not mind too much; however, you should STILL have him or her document your network in case they didn’t show up one day for work. And if you AREN’T really happy with their work and aren’t sure if they are doing a good job, that’s all the more you should have this done. I’ve seen this time and time again where people are left in the dark. Not for nefarious reasons, but things happen. People move, get injured, get sick and in some cases, even pass away.

Occasionally I’ve run across potential new clients who aren’t really happy with their IT person’s work or the IT company has grown to fast with more lucrative customers, but stay with them out of fear. As one business owner to another, this is NEVER a good reason to stay with your current provider.

If you can’t trust the person with the most access and power over your computer network – the core of your business – you need to find someone you CAN trust. A truly professional person or provider would NEVER hold their client hostage or do any harm in handing over the “keys to the kingdom” to another company, And any good IT firm should be able to walk you through the transition to prevent that person from doing any damage.

Thank you for reading.