Superfast-IT

15/10/2026

Ask most business owners how many laptops they own, and you’ll get a guess. Ask which ones are still under warranty, and the guess gets worse.😦

It matters because that guess is your IT budget. A business with 60 laptops on a four-year cycle replaces about 15 of them every year. Without purchase dates on record, that bill lands as a surprise. With them, it’s a line in next year’s plan.

Software works the same way. Licences are added when someone joins and rarely removed when they leave, so you can end up paying for seats nobody uses. And a laptop nobody has listed doesn’t get patched, which is a security problem as well as a cost one.

We’ve written a plain-English guide to IT asset management for SMEs: what to track, and how to build an inventory in an afternoon.

If you couldn’t answer the laptop question above, it’s worth a look.👀

IT asset management for SMEs: what to track, how to build an inventory and when to get help. Includes lifecycle costs and best practice.

14/10/2026

71% of employees use AI tools that their employer hasn't approved. The NCSC quoted that figure last month in new guidance on "shadow AI".

If you run a consultancy, the odds are that a client document has already been fed into a free chatbot this week.

The NCSC doesn't recommend a ban. Its advice is to find out why people are reaching for these tools and give them a safe version instead. We agree. A ban just moves the problem onto personal phones, where you can't see it at all.

For a 20-person firm on Microsoft 365, the safe version usually looks like this.

Pick one approved tool. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, signed in with a work account, keeps prompts under your business data protections and is included with most business plans.

Write one page on what can go in and what can't. Drafts and public information are fine. Client data and anything under NDA isn't.

Check what's already connected. Your Microsoft 365 admin centre shows which third-party apps people have signed into with their work accounts.

Tell the team in a 15-minute meeting. Nobody reads a policy PDF.

Has your firm written down what staff can put into AI tools yet? Yes, no and "working on it" all count.

05/10/2026

If you paid Microsoft to keep your old Windows 10 PCs patched last year, the renewal lands next week. It costs double.💰😳

Here's the maths for a typical office, and the two questions we'd ask before paying it.

Windows 10 stopped getting free security updates in October 2025. Microsoft's Extended Security Updates scheme lets businesses keep paying for patches, one year at a time.

Year one costs around £66 a device, and it ends on 13 October. Year two is around £132 a device. Year three is £264. If you skipped year one and want to join now, you pay for both, so roughly £198 a device. All ex VAT.

For a 40-person office with 25 PCs still on Windows 10, year two alone is about £3,300 plus VAT. That money buys nothing new. It keeps old machines safe for another 12 months.

Before anyone signs off on the renewal, ask your IT provider this.

How many of our Windows 10 machines can move to Windows 11 for free? Most business PCs bought in the last five years meet the hardware requirements, and those shouldn't be on the scheme at all.

For those who can't, what's the replacement plan and when? The price only goes one way.

If nobody can give you a device count by Friday, that's the bigger problem.

Send this to whoever signs off on your IT spend.

01/10/2026

12 Types of Malware and How They Get Into Your Business

The 12 types of malware most likely to hit a UK business, how each one gets in, and what it costs you when it does. Plain English, no jargon.

18/09/2026

How to Switch IT Support Provider Without Disruption

Thinking about switching IT provider? Here's how to plan the handover, protect your data, and pick a new provider without any downtime.

08/09/2026

Superfast IT Welcomes Our New IT Support Apprentice

Ben Pollard has joined Superfast IT as an IT support apprentice.

04/09/2026

🌟Say hello to Ben Pollard, the newest face on our IT support team.🌟

Ben's joined us as an IT support apprentice, with A-levels in maths, computer science and economics under his belt. He's keen to get stuck into real work from day one: real tickets, real clients, and engineers around him who've been doing this for years.

That's exactly the attitude we look for at Superfast IT: hands-on, ready to learn by doing.

Welcome to the team, Ben!😀

27/08/2026

How Does Co-Managed IT Support Work?

Wondering how co-managed IT support works? Here's exactly how responsibility splits between your internal team and an external provider.

21/08/2026

Microsoft has started automatically installing Copilot on business computers, no request needed. 🤔

Before your team gets excited and starts using it, there's a step most businesses skip:
❗Checking who can see what.

Copilot only knows what the person using it can already open. That sounds fine until you think about how most business file systems work.

A folder is shared with everyone because properly chasing permissions takes too long. A project folder gets opened for a few weeks and is never looked at again. Nobody notices, because nobody goes looking through years-old files.

Copilot changes that. Nobody must go looking anymore. Someone asks a question, and it answers using anything it's allowed to open, including the file that got shared company-wide by mistake three years ago and never fixed.

We'd get your file permissions checked before you let the team loose on Copilot. Start with HR and finance; they cause the most damage when left wide open. People should only be able to see what they need for their own job, nothing more.

If that sounds like something worth checking before Copilot does, get in touch.
📞 0121 309 0090
📧 [email protected]

19/08/2026

What is Managed Email Security, and Do You Need It?

Managed email security stops phishing, business email compromise and account takeover before they cost you money. Here's what it actually involves.