Microsoft shipped fixes for more than 1,400 security flaws on October 13. The month before, it was nearly a thousand.
Somebody has to read that list.
That's the part of in-house IT nobody budgets for. When a CPA firm leans on an office manager who's good with computers, or keeps a part-time tech on retainer, the visible cost is the salary. The invisible cost is everything that doesn't get done because one person can't do it all.
Patch triage is the easy example. Out of 1,400 fixes, a handful actually matter for your firm this month. Figuring out which handful is a process, not an afternoon. Skip it and you're running known holes. Push everything blindly and you break the one legacy tax app that only runs on a specific version.
Then add the rest of the list. Offboarding the seasonal preparer who still has mailbox access in July. Testing whether your backup actually restores. Noticing the 3am sign-in from a country nobody on staff is in.
None of it shows up as a line item until the week it costs you. And during tax season, a day of downtime isn't a day. It's a deadline.
The question was never whether your IT person is good. It's whether one person can cover ground that now moves this fast.
Worth a look before your next renewal.
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