As a general rule, IT vendors are knowledgeable, reputable, and valuable to business owners. After all, operating your company IT environment is a complex task and outside vendors bring supplemental expertise that you may not have internally. It's often a wise business decision to engage outside help as needed.

However, there are exceptions to every rule, and this is increasingly evident in the IT industry. With regularity, many business owners are discovering after the fact that their IT vendor is deficient in several basic and fundamental ways. This is especially true with smaller IT vendors who may not have the resources or sophistication of a larger shop.

Oftentimes, an outside IT vendor is given access to the most critical and sensitive assets of a company. These assets include your corporate IT networks that support the entire enterprise. They also include databases that contain customer financial information and personally identifiable employee information (i.e., HR records).

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