If you run a small business in West Yorkshire and you’ve never had a proper IT security check, there’s a good chance your network has at least one of these five problems.

We know, because we find them almost every time we audit a small business — from accountancy firms in Wakefield to estate agents in Dewsbury, dental practices in Huddersfield to solicitors in Bradford.

None of these are your fault. They’re just things that happen when a network grows organically without anyone keeping a formal eye on it. The good news is that all of them are fixable — often in an afternoon.

1. Default Router Passwords That Have Never Been Changed

When a router is installed, it comes with a default username and password — usually something like “admin/admin” or “admin/password.” These defaults are publicly listed online for every router model.

If your router password has never been changed, anyone who can access your network — or anyone who physically gets near your router — can log into your router’s admin panel and see everything on your network.

We find this in roughly 60% of small business audits. It’s the easiest thing to fix and one of the most common vulnerabilities we see.

2. Ex-Employee Accounts Still Active

When someone leaves a business, their email account, VPN access, and system logins should be disabled immediately. In practice, this almost never happens on time — especially in small businesses where nobody owns the IT process formally.

We regularly find accounts for people who left months or even years ago, still active and accessible. If that person left on bad terms, or if their credentials were ever compromised, your entire network is exposed through a door you thought was closed.

A quick audit of your active accounts usually takes less than an hour. The fix takes minutes.

3. No Separation Between Guest WiFi and Internal Systems

If you have a waiting area, a meeting room, or any space where visitors connect to your WiFi, they should be on a completely separate network from your internal systems.

Without network segmentation, a visitor on your guest WiFi — or anyone who gets hold of the password — can potentially see the devices on your internal network. Depending on your setup, that could include servers, shared drives, and networked printers containing sensitive documents.

Most modern routers can create a guest network in minutes. Most small businesses haven’t set it up.

4. Outdated Firmware on Critical Devices

Your router, firewall, and network switches all run software — called firmware — that needs to be updated regularly. Manufacturers release firmware updates to patch security vulnerabilities that researchers (and criminals) discover over time.

. Most small businesses haven’t updated their router firmware in years.

We find this in almost every audit we run. The fix is straightforward — log into the device, check for updates, apply them. But if nobody’s job it is to do this, it won’t happen.

5. No Monitoring — So Nobody Knows When Something Goes Wrong

Perhaps the most dangerous gap of all is the absence of any monitoring. Most small businesses have no way of knowing if something unusual is happening on their network.

An attacker can sit inside a network for weeks — quietly watching, collecting credentials, mapping systems — before doing anything visible. Without monitoring, you’d have no idea.

Basic network monitoring is more affordable than most small businesses realise, and it’s included as standard in our managed IT support retainer.

What Should You Do About This?

The first step is understanding where you stand. That’s exactly what our network security audit is designed to do.

For a fixed price of £500, we scan your entire network, identify vulnerabilities including the five above, give you a risk rating, and walk you through a plain-English report with a prioritised action plan.

We serve small businesses across West Yorkshire — including Dewsbury, Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield and the surrounding areas — both remotely and on-site.

If you’d like to book a free 30-minute consultation first, you can do that here: [calendly.com/onixed-support]

Onixed Ltd — IT Security & Infrastructure for Small Business
onixed.co.uk | support@onixed.co.uk