Advantage I.T.

The quarterly review with your IT provider is one of the most useful meetings on your calendar, but it's easy to let it run on autopilot. Walk in with six real questions and you turn it from a status update into a strategic check-in.

Six to ask at your next review:

1. What changed in our security posture since last quarter? Not "what did you do." What CHANGED. The answer should reference specific risks reduced.
2. Which CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities are still unpatched in our environment, and why?
3. When did we last test our backup restore on a real workload, and what did the test show?
4. How many user accounts have privileged or admin access, and is that list smaller than it was last quarter?
5. What incidents (security events, near-misses, alerts) did we have this quarter that I didn't hear about, and why didn't I hear about them?
6. If we were hit by ransomware tonight, what's our realistic Recovery Time Objective for the most important systems?

If your IT provider can answer all six with specifics, they're operating at the standard you're paying for. Hedging or "let me get back to you" on more than one is information worth acting on.

If you deleted a OneDrive file recently and went looking for it in your Recycle Bin… surprise, it's not there.

Starting in May 2026, files deleted from OneDrive or SharePoint in the cloud no longer appear in your local Recycle Bin or Trash.

They are removed directly from your device and can only be recovered from the OneDrive or SharePoint web?based recycle bin.

1. Go to onedrive.com or your SharePoint site

2. Click "Recycle bin" in the left menu

3. Right-click the file and select "Restore"

You typically have 30 days before files move to the second?stage recycle bin (which most people don’t know about), and up to 93 more days there, depending on your organization’s settings.

After about 123 days, they’re gone for good.

Your office printer is probably the least secured device on your network.

Default admin passwords are still in place. The hard drive inside it stores copies of every document scanned or printed in the last few months. Its web interface is exposed to anyone on the same network, and many printers have known vulnerabilities that haven't been patched in years.

Five settings to change today: replace the default admin password, turn off any wireless or guest networks the printer broadcasts, disable old services you don't use (FTP, Telnet, SMB v1), turn on encryption for stored print jobs and schedule a regular wipe of the hard drive, and put the printer on a separate network segment if your firewall supports VLANs.

Most attackers look at office printers before they look at servers, because nobody changes the password.