CMIT Solutions of Wilmington

06/19/2026

A few weeks ago we wrote about the Windows 10 extension program. We need to add something we left out.

Commercial customers actually have access to three years of extended security updates, not one. The catch is the cost: $61 per device for Year One, $122 for Year Two, $244 for Year Three. And if you skip a year, you pay it retroactively to get back in.

At full run that is $427 per device for three years of patching a machine that still needs to be replaced when it is over. This week’s newsletter explains the full picture and who the program actually makes sense for.

Link in comments.

06/12/2026

Hurricane season brings a wave of preparedness content. Most of it focuses on the wrong question.

The real question is not what kind of disaster might hit your business. It is whether your business can operate when your office is unavailable, regardless of why. A water main break, a chemical evacuation, a power outage, the cause does not matter. The week of downtime is the same problem.

The latest issue of Make IT Simple walks through why a continuity plan built around disaster type misses the point, and what to do instead.

Link in comments.

06/05/2026

AI tools are confident by design. That same confidence that makes them useful can make them dangerous when they are wrong and you do not catch it.

This week's Make IT Simple newsletter breaks down what that looks like in practice, and why every AI output touching a client, a contract, or a financial record needs a human who knows enough to catch the mistake.

Link in comments.

05/28/2026

Windows 10 support ended last October. Microsoft offered an extension for one more year of security updates, and a lot of people heard that news and quietly assumed they were covered.

The extension was real. The protection was not automatic. You had to enroll. And even if you did, the runway ends this October.

This week's newsletter looks at why "extended" is a word that lowers everyone's temperature, and what to actually do about it if you have Windows 10 machines still running.

Link in comments.*



* I used to think the "link in comments" was a sneaky way for a business to track who clicked what. I don't know if that's true, but the reason as I understand...... is that Facebook is all about the ads, and placing the links in the comments avoids Facebook's algorithmic PENALTIES.

05/25/2026

Remembering and honoring our fallen military heroes who gave everything to defend our freedom

05/21/2026

When an employee exits your business, how confident are you that all access has been revoked?

Email accounts. Cloud platforms. Shared drives. Billing systems. Client contacts stored on a personal phone. Most businesses discover the gaps only after they matter.

This week's Make IT Simple newsletter covers the offboarding framework every business should have, why personal devices create a liability that extends well beyond the exit date, and what a well-built process actually looks like in practice.

What is your current offboarding process? We would like to hear how other local businesses handle it. Link in comments.

05/15/2026

Periodic reviews provide clarity in our ever changing IT environment

05/11/2026

I’ve seen a few scary headlines recently about printers “no longer being supported” in Windows. Have you?

Well, let me save you a mild panic attack 😅

Your printer is not about to stop working. Microsoft confirmed that it has stopped publishing new V3 and V4 printer drivers through Windows Update. That sounds dramatic. It isn’t.

First, a quick bit of translation. A printer driver is a piece of software that allows your computer to talk to your printer. Without it, your PC and printer can’t understand each other.

For years, many printers used something called V3 or V4 drivers. These are just older driver models. Microsoft announced back in 2023 that they were phasing these out. This has been a slow, planned transition, not a sudden switch-off.

So, what changes this year?

👉 Microsoft will stop publishing new V3 and V4 drivers to Windows Update

👉 Existing printers using those drivers will continue to work

👉 You can still install drivers from the manufacturer (HP, Canon, etc.) if needed.

Windows isn’t deleting or blocking printers. It isn’t turning them into expensive paperweights 🖨️ In fact, Windows 11 already includes built-in support for something called Mopria printers.

Mopria is a modern printing standard that’s been around since about 2014. If your printer supports it (many do), Windows already has what it needs built in.

That means plug-and-play without extra downloads.

Microsoft is moving toward this more modern, built-in approach instead of relying on lots of third-party driver packages.

There are a few milestone dates to be aware of:

🗓️ January 2026: No new V3/V4 drivers published to Windows Update

🗓️ July 2026: Windows will prefer the newer built-in IPP driver automatically

🗓️ July 2027: Third-party updates via Windows Update mostly blocked (except security fixes)

But Windows will still allow vendor-supplied installer packages. So, if your printer manufacturer provides a driver on their website, you can still install it.

That said, if you’re running very old printers in a business environment, this is a gentle nudge to review them. Not because they’ll suddenly fail, but because older hardware often becomes harder to manage and secure over time.

👉 If you’re honest, how old is the oldest printer in your office right now? And would it cause chaos if it stopped working tomorrow?

05/04/2026

May the force be with you.

If the Empire had enforced MFA, the Rebellion never gets past the login screen.

05/03/2026

Free email accounts like Gmail are convenient, but they come without the administrative controls that matter when something goes wrong. No enforceable multi-factor authentication across your organization. No meaningful activity log. No ability to revoke access in real time. No platform for identity threat detection that can shut down a compromise before it spreads.

What most business owners do not consider is the chain reaction. That free Gmail address is often also the recovery account for their accounting software, their bank login, their domain registrar, and their cloud storage. An attacker with access to the inbox does not need a single password. They request resets, intercept the emails, and work through the list.

A business email account through Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace runs a few dollars per user per month. The controls it provides are not optional features. They are the difference between a contained incident and a very bad weekend.

The latest issue of Make IT Simple covers what this looks like in practice.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/free-email-account-unlocks-everything-david-usher-eudve

I got a call this past weekend from a friend in a mild panic. Her Gmail account had been compromised.