When an IT partner spots early signs that a connectivity carrier is under financial stress, what should they do with that information? Geordie Hogarth argues that the instinct to wait is both understandable and wrong — and that the obligation to raise difficult supply chain conversations before clients are forced to react is one of the clearest tests of whether an IT partnership is genuinely embedded.
Risk Management
Who Owns Compliance When You Leave Microsoft’s Umbrella?
Cloud compliance doesn’t transfer automatically when you move data off Microsoft 365. Si Futures’ Security and Compliance Specialist Sean Rogers examines who owns accountability when you self-host — and the seven questions every business should ask their IT provider.
What the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill Means for UK SMEs
The UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill is raising the bar on what businesses and their IT providers must prove. Si Futures explains what the legislation means for UK SMEs, why managed service providers are now directly in scope, and why Cyber Essentials certification is the practical starting point.
Misconfigured, Not Hacked: Why Your Firewall Settings Are a Bigger Risk Than You Think
The most common route into an SME network is not a sophisticated attack — it is a firewall setting that was wrong from the start, or that drifted over time. Nicholas Broderick explains how benchmarking against CIS standards turns assumption into accountability.
When Your Hosting Provider Gets Hacked: The DNS Security Risk Most Businesses Never See Coming
A travel consultancy contacted Si Futures because they could not send or receive email — not because of anything they had done wrong, but because their hosting provider had been compromised. This is the DNS security risk most businesses never think about: the infrastructure you rely on sits in someone else’s hands, and their security posture becomes yours by default
Cyber Essentials Is No Longer Optional: What UK SMEs Need to Know Before April 27
The UK Cyber Essentials scheme gets significantly stricter on April 27. Si Futures examines what the changes mean for UK SMEs, why certification is increasingly the price of entry in the UK market, and what businesses need to do before the deadline.
The Resilience Gap: Why Your Network Fails When It Matters Most
After thirty years managing networks across the UK and South Africa, Si Futures examines why business connectivity resilience consistently fails — and the five questions every IT leader should be asking before their next board meeting.
Telling You Before It Breaks: What Proactive IT Management Really Looks Like
An expired SSL certificate on a Friday afternoon shouldn’t be a surprise. Automated monitoring with tiered 30/14/7 day notification thresholds replaced manual tracking, while REST API integration opened firewall policy hygiene analysis — identifying dead rules that create unnecessary security gaps across client estates.
When Your MSP Catches What Your Carrier Missed: Handover Documentation Failures
When carrier documentation says one thing but your monitoring data says another, who do you trust? This investigation into six months of unexplained packet loss reveals why every carrier handover needs systematic verification—and how three documentation errors in a single handover can misdirect your entire monitoring strategy.
