Every account in your company is a door. The email one, the bank one, the invoicing one, the tool someone signed up for one day for a project. Doors pile up on their own with every new tool, every person who joins and every supplier who is let in. The problem is almost never opening them. The problem is that nobody closes them.

That is why access is the area where an SME gets the most for the least. It does not ask for investment, but for order. And that order fits in four rules anyone can understand without knowing IT.

  1. One person, one account. If three people share a login, nobody is accountable for what is done with it. Shared belongs to no one, and that includes passwords written on a common sheet.
  2. Two-factor where it hurts. Email and anything opened from outside the office deserve more than a password. It is the highest-impact minute you can invest.
  3. Leavers are closed the same day. When someone leaves the company, their access closes that day, not whenever someone remembers. An ex-employee's account still open is any attacker's favourite door, and the most avoidable one.
  4. Know who holds the master key. Administrator accounts, the ones that can touch everything, should be countable on one hand and known by heart.

The question is not technical. Who can get into your company today, and who checks when someone leaves?

Three signs warn that this needs attention. Shared passwords live in a document or on paper, someone who left months ago "thinks" they no longer have access, and nobody could list the administrators of each system.

To make it practical we have prepared a downloadable two-page guide. The first page sums up the essentials. It covers what an access is, the four rules and the terms worth knowing. The second is the tool, a printable joiners-and-leavers checklist so every arrival and departure leaves the doors the way they should be, plus a five-minute quarterly review.

August, with the team at minimum strength, is when those open doors show the most. That is the subject of The company shuts down in August, but your access doesn't.