Field Notes · Technology Ownership
This is not a question about distrusting a technician. It is a business-continuity question. Good outside providers make a business easier to support without making themselves the only person who can recover it.
Start with ownership, not passwords
A password is useful, but it does not prove the business controls an account. For each important system, identify the legal owner, administrative users, billing contact, recovery email address, recovery phone number, and vendor support process.
Pay particular attention to:
- domain registration and DNS;
- website hosting and content administration;
- Microsoft 365 or other cloud administration;
- email continuity and recovery contacts;
- backups and the ability to restore them;
- internet, phone, and security vendors;
- firewalls, Wi-Fi, and managed network equipment;
- line-of-business software and subscriptions;
- business-controlled password storage.
Test the recovery path
Documentation that has never been tested may only document an assumption. Confirm that a second authorized person can locate the records, reach the vendor, and complete an account-recovery or emergency-support process without borrowing somebody else’s identity.
Do not email a spreadsheet full of passwords around the office. Use an appropriate business-controlled credential system, limit access by role, and keep recovery information current.
Follow the money when the map is missing
If the technology inventory is incomplete, accounting records often provide the first clues. Recurring charges and old invoices identify vendors, subscriptions, equipment, and support relationships that can be checked one at a time. Our anonymized case study, When the IT Keys Leave With the Technician, shows why this works.
Ownership and recoverability are part of our Small Business Technology Checkup. The goal is not fear. It is knowing the business can keep operating when people, vendors, or circumstances change.
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