6 risks your business probably didn’t have at the start of the year
January feels like a long time ago, back when the “new year, new me” energy was still going strong.
Since then, a lot has changed. You’ve hired people, added tools and signed on new vendors. Maybe you’ve opened a new location or changed how your team operates. The first half of the year moves fast and when you’re heads-down, it’s easy to miss a few things along the way.
Consider this your midyear check-in — an honest look at six risks that tend to creep in as businesses grow, with a few questions to help you spot if any apply to you.
1. You added people, but not everyone needs the same access
Every time you hire someone, they need access to applications like Microsoft Outlook or Google Workspace, shared drives, project management tools, communication platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams, and sometimes financial software. When things move fast, it’s easier to grant broad access and figure it out later.
The problem is, later rarely comes when hiring moves faster than process.
Ask yourself: Who has access to what right now?
2. Someone left and their access might still be active
When someone is leaving the company, the focus is on wrapping up their work, redistributing responsibilities and making sure nothing falls through the cracks.
What doesn’t always get the same attention is everything behind the scenes, like deactivating logins and removing access to systems.
Off boarding moves quickly and priorities shift, making keeping track of who has access to what easy to overlook.
Ask yourself: Is all former employee access fully removed?
3. You adopted new tools without a full security review
Someone on your team finds a tool that helps them share files more easily, track projects or manage client work. It’s easy to use, the price is right and within a week the team is using it.
That’s a win, but no one stops to ask what it connects to, what company data it can access or where that data is being stored.
This happens all the time in growing businesses. Tools get adopted quickly and the security conversation gets pushed until later. For many businesses, the right moment to revisit it never arrives.
Ask yourself: Do you know where your data lives?
4. You have backups, but recovery hasn’t been tested
Having a backup of your data feels like having a safety net. And it is, until something goes wrong and you realize it might have holes.
Most businesses trust that their backups are running; fewer know whether they’d work if something went wrong.
Add a few months of growth with new systems, new data and new ways of working, and your backups may not be covering everything they should. Without testing recovery, you don’t know if it will work when it matters most.
Ask yourself: When was your recovery last tested?
5. You added a vendor, but didn’t fully evaluate the risks
When you bring on a new vendor, the focus is on what they can do for you. Most of the attention goes to capabilities and cost, which makes sense. What’s easy to miss is what you’re handing over in return.
Questions like what they can see, what they can connect to and how that access is controlled often come later or get skipped.
Ask yourself: What access do your vendors have and how do they protect your data?
6. Small issues have been piling up over time
Every business has a list. A shared drive that’s gotten messy, old user accounts that were never revisited, and security settings that were set up once and never looked at again. None of it feels urgent enough to fix, so it sits indefinitely and quietly grows.
It’s a normal part of running a business, but six months of “we’ll get to it” adds up faster than you think.
Ask yourself: What’s been sitting on your IT backlog?
Now’s a good time to look closer
If a few of these rang a bell, that’s a red flag. It’s what happens when a business moves fast. The risk isn’t just that these gaps exist. It’s that you don’t know about them.
The middle of the year is a natural moment to pause and get clear on where things stand.
Most of these issues don’t take long to spot. The challenge is making the time to look. That’s where a second set of eyes helps.
Schedule a discovery call today and let us be your second set of eyes.