What IT and cyber security support do Irish accountants and solicitors need?

Practice-software upgrades are non-trivial events. They affect billing data, client matter histories, time recording, and integrations with statutory filing systems (Revenue, CRO). A bad upgrade can cost a firm days of lost productivity. The MSP role is to coordinate these upgrades with the vendor and the firm's billing and finance team, test in a representative environment first, and have a rollback plan.

Document management is where most professional services firms are weakest on IT hygiene. Files end up in personal OneDrive folders, get shared via email rather than secure links, and never get classified correctly. The fix is policy plus tooling, implemented without breaking how partners actually work.

This matters more in professional services than in general SME territory. In a breach, the regulators (the Data Protection Commission and, where relevant, the Central Bank of Ireland) and the professional bodies (the Law Society of Ireland for solicitors, Chartered Accountants Ireland and ACCA for accountants) look at whether you complied with GDPR and at whether you discharged your professional duty of confidentiality. The two overlap but are not identical. A firm can be GDPR-compliant and still have failed its professional obligation.

The practical fix is a small set of decisions (which platform, who has access to what, how external sharing works) implemented consistently across the firm. The MSP role is to deploy the controls and audit them. The firm sets the policy.

Insurance applications used to be a yes/no checklist. They're now narrative. The carriers writing PI and cyber for Irish professional services firms (Hiscox, CFC, Beazley, AIG, Allianz, Travelers) — usually broked through Lockton, Marsh, Arachas or ARC — ask "how do you do MFA" not just "do you do MFA". Firms that can answer with specifics get better premiums.

The MSP role here is to deliver the controls, document them in a way that maps to insurer questionnaires, and renew the documentation as the environment changes. A holistic baseline maps closely to standard insurer requirements.

The questionnaires vary in detail but share common ground. They want evidence, not assertion. "We do MFA" isn't enough. They want screenshots, policy documents, audit logs.

Firms that have a holistic MSP baseline already have most of the evidence. The work is in compiling it into a response pack and updating it when the next questionnaire comes through. Firms on break/fix usually don't have the evidence and have to either generate it under pressure or decline the supplier relationship.