Affinity MSP has been named one of Australia’s Top 10 small workplaces in The Australian Best Places to Work 2026, powered by WorkL.

The recognition is particularly meaningful because it is based entirely on anonymous employee survey responses.

It's 2pm on a Saturday and one of your stores just lost its point-of-sale connection. The queue is building, your store manager is calling head office, and whoever picks up the phone is now trying to diagnose a network issue between customers. Multiply that by a dozen locations and it's easy to see why retail leaders spend so much time thinking about IT, even though technology was never supposed to be the main event.

There's one question on cyber insurance renewal forms that catches out more small and mid-sized businesses than any other: "Do you maintain immutable, air-gapped, or offline backups of your critical business data?" Most business owners tick yes without thinking twice.

If your Microsoft 365 tenant has been running for more than a couple of years, or it was set up by a previous provider and left alone since, there's a good chance some of your Microsoft 365 security settings haven't been touched since day one.

Microsoft has quietly raised the bar on its default protections over the past few years.

We are incredibly proud to announce that Affinity MSP has been ranked as the #1 Australian MSP on the 2026 MSP 501 list — the most prestigious and comprehensive ranking of managed service providers in the world.

Affinity MSP Named to the MSP 501 2026

Affinity MSP has been named to the MSP 501 2026 — one of the most prestigious rankings in the global technology industry.

Published annually by MSP Summit, the MSP 501 evaluates thousands of managed service providers worldwide across a rigorous set of criteria: revenue mix and quality, recurring revenue, business efficiency, growth, and stability.

Removing local admin rights is one of the most practical ways to improve endpoint security, reduce avoidable IT problems and keep company devices consistent. Although permanent administrator access can make occasional software installations easier, it also gives users, applications and malicious software far more control than they usually need.

It only takes one moment.

A team member quickly checks their personal email during lunch. Someone uploads a work document to a personal cloud drive because it's more convenient. Another employee reuses the same password they've had for years.

None of these actions are malicious.

AI-powered phishing threats are no longer something that only large enterprises need to worry about. The same technology that helps businesses work smarter is now being used by attackers to craft more convincing, more targeted, and more dangerous scam messages — at a scale that was impossible just a few years ago.

Every business eventually reaches the same moment. A tech refresh happens, new devices get rolled out, and a growing pile of old laptops, monitors, phones, and cables starts accumulating in a storage room somewhere.

“Good enough” is the most expensive IT strategy most businesses don’t realise they’re running. It rarely shows up as a line item, never gets debated in a board meeting, and almost never has an owner. But it has a name in every engineering team that’s ever inherited a messy environment: IT technical debt.

Shadow AI Security: What Australian Businesses Need to Know in 2026

Shadow AI security isn't a future problem. For most businesses, it's already happening — quietly, routinely, and often with the best intentions.