The Unite Group News and Updates
Shadow AI: the risk hiding in everyday work apps
Shadow AI is any use of AI that sits outside the systems and processes your business has approved. The picture that usually comes with the phrase is a member of staff choosing to paste a client contract into a free chatbot. That happens, and it is the version the...
Office WiFi problems: is it the WiFi, the line or the laptop?
‘The WiFi is bad’ covers three different faults, and they have three different fixes. The broadband line into the building can be too slow or too busy. The wireless network inside the building can have gaps, interference or too many devices on one box. Or a single...
Microsoft 365 licensing: your bill went up, and Premium did not
Microsoft announced this in December 2025 and most businesses will meet it at their next renewal, which for many has not arrived yet. Microsoft 365 licensing prices rose on 1 July 2026 across almost every commercial plan, by between 5% and 23% on the published US...
Microsoft passkeys: The February prompt your staff cannot skip
Microsoft passkeys are about to become a much bigger part of how Microsoft 365 users sign in. On 1 February 2027, a Microsoft 365 user whose only second factor is a text message will meet a passkey registration prompt at sign-in that they cannot dismiss. Microsoft...
Switching IT provider: what a proper handover includes
Most businesses put their effort into choosing the new provider and almost none into leaving the old one. That is the wrong way round. Switching IT provider goes wrong at the exit, not the entry, because the outgoing supplier holds things you may not know they hold:...
SharePoint permissions decide what Copilot can see on day one
Every explanation of Copilot security arrives at the same reassurance: it only surfaces what the user could already open. That is accurate, and it is the reason the first week goes badly. Copilot inherits your SharePoint permissions exactly as they stand. A business...
Core Web Vitals: What A Slow Website Costs A B2B Firm In Enquiries
Two and a half seconds is the number to hold on to. That is the target Google sets for Largest Contentful Paint, the point at which the main content of a page has appeared. Core Web Vitals are the three measures Google uses to score the experience: how fast the main...
EDR vs Antivirus: What Is EDR, And Does Your Business Need It?
So what is EDR? Endpoint detection and response records what happens on your computers so somebody can work out what went wrong and stop it spreading. It watches behaviour as well as matching files against a list of known threats, and it keeps a history: which process...
Proactive IT Support: Five Numbers That Tell You Whether You Are Getting It
Proactive IT support is a phrase almost every provider in this market uses. Buyers are right to have stopped hearing it. The claim costs nothing to make. None of it can be checked from a website. So here is a version that can be tested: the provider acts on a system's...
Cyber Essentials Plus: The Six Things That Fail The Audit
Cyber Essentials Plus is decided by a hands-on technical test of a sample of your real devices. The test specification is published, so the main failure conditions are known in advance. Six issues account for much of the work: A patch left outstanding for more than 14...
The Microsoft 365 Offboarding Checklist Every Business Skips
Most businesses can describe their leaver process, but far fewer can produce a dated record showing what happened to the last person who left. That gap is where Microsoft 365 offboarding fails. Three months on, the leaver's mailbox is still forwarding to a manager who...
Business Email Compromise and Deepfake Fraud: What to Add to Your Defences
Most people who fall for a fraudulent payment request are not careless. Rather, they are competent staff who did what a colleague appeared to ask, on a day when the request looked ordinary. Business email compromise works because it uses the normal shape of a working...
Cyber Essentials vs Managed Cyber Security: What UK SMEs Need in 2026
Do you need Cyber Essentials, managed cyber security, or both? For most UK businesses above roughly 20 users in 2026, the honest answer is both. Cyber Essentials confirms that your controls met the required standard when you were assessed. Managed cyber security keeps...
Business Continuity Plans for UK SMEs: From Backups to a Tested Plan
A business continuity plan sets out how a company keeps trading while its systems are being restored. Backups sit inside that plan and cover one part of it, which is getting the data back. Government figures show how far apart those two things sit in practice....
Patch Discipline for UK SMEs: What a Managed Patching Cadence Looks Like in 2026
Patch discipline is the invisible backbone of every UK SME that passes Cyber Essentials on the first attempt and renews a cyber insurance policy without hard questions. In 2026 the bar moved. Cyber Essentials v3.3, published by NCSC in April, tightened the fix...
Leased Line vs Business Broadband: A UK Buyer’s Guide (2026)
Business broadband and leased lines look similar on a price sheet and behave very differently under load. In this post, we'll compare leased line vs business broadband to help you understand the differences. The short version is this. Business broadband is a shared...
One-Provider IT, Phones and Mobiles for Newcastle SMEs: What Consolidation Delivers
The typical Newcastle SME running 20 to 50 staff is paying four different suppliers for what one supplier could deliver: IT support from one company, phones from another, mobiles from a third, business broadband from a fourth. Four contracts, four SLAs, four...
Passkeys in Microsoft 365: How UK SMEs Roll Them Out in Q3 2026
Microsoft is turning passkeys on for every Entra ID tenant through 2026. General availability of passkey profiles landed in March. Auto-enablement across tenants that have not opted in is rolling through Q3. For UK SMEs on Microsoft 365, the decision is not whether to...