Workstation and access security
Anti-virus genuinely running, updates left behind, administrator accounts, shared passwords, two-factor authentication on email and on the tools the business depends on.
Free and without obligation
Your free IT audit
We review the security, the backups, the network and the everyday IT practice of your business, then hand you a written report: what is exposed, what has to be fixed first, and what that will cost. The work is free, the report is yours, and you remain free to do nothing with it.
Reply within one working day. Audit carried out within 48 hours of your request.
The scope
What we actually look at
Four areas, in this order: it is the order in which the damage shows up in a small business when something goes wrong.
Backups and the ability to recover
What is backed up, where, how often, and above all: when a restore was last tested. A backup that has never been restored is not a backup.
Network and infrastructure
Router, guest Wi-Fi separation, remote access left open to the internet, the age of the equipment, and the single points of failure the whole business rests on.
Tools, data and daily practice
The software used day to day, manual re-keying, files shared outside the company's own tools, personal data handled and where it is actually hosted.
The free audit covers one workstation and takes two hours. Beyond that — several workstations, several sites, a server or an Active Directory domain to cover — the full audit is costed on the quotation, and the first one stays yours.
The sequence
Four steps, with nothing installed and no standing access
- 1
First conversation
You describe your business, your headcount and what worries you. We confirm that an audit makes sense in your case — sometimes it does not, and we say so.
- 2
Visit or video call
We look at the workstations, the server or NAS, the router, the backups and the accounts. No agent is installed and no standing access is kept.
- 3
Analysis
We rank every finding by severity and by the effort needed to fix it, separating what is a free setting change from what requires real spending.
- 4
Debrief
A written report, handed over and talked through in person. You ask your questions, you keep the document, and you decide on your own what happens next.
The visit takes about two hours on site. The debrief — the written, prioritised and costed action plan — reaches you within 48 hours.
The deliverable
What you receive, and what belongs to you
The audit report
- An inventory of what was observed: workstations, servers, backups, accounts.
- The list of findings, ranked by severity rather than by order of discovery.
- The zero-cost or low-effort fixes, which you can apply without us.
- A prioritised, costed action plan that separates the essential from the nice to have.
The document is handed over in a readable, reusable format. You can pass it on to your accountant, your insurer or another provider: it is yours, including if you never give us any work afterwards.
What the audit is not
- It is not an automated scan whose report is generated by a tool and sold on as expertise.
- It is not a penetration test: we do not attack your systems, we observe them.
- It is not a certification, nor a document you can hold up to an auditor or an insurer.
- It is not a quotation in disguise: findings with no real consequence are written up as such, and some audits lead to no proposal at all.
For a formal, tooled-up exercise, the place to look is our cybersecurity work: a wider scope, a documented method, and a chargeable engagement.
Who it is for
The situations where this audit is worth having
The audit is designed for small and medium businesses with no in-house IT staff — the ones whose systems were assembled by successive additions: one provider for the internet line, another for the accounting software, a machine bought in a hurry, a backup set up three years ago by someone who has since left. Nobody holds the whole picture any more, and that picture is precisely what the report puts back together.
Three triggers come up most often. An incident at a neighbouring or competing business, which turns the question into "could that happen to us". An insurance or client security questionnaire that nobody in the company knows how to answer. A change of scale — new hires, a second site, a move to remote working — that makes visible what the current setup can no longer carry.
Conversely, if you already have an internal IT function or a managed-service provider in place, the free audit will mostly duplicate their work. We will tell you that in the first conversation rather than cost you half a day.
Depending on what the report brings out, the next step belongs to cybersecurity, to software development when manual re-keying costs several hours a week, or to artificial intelligence when a repetitive task can be automated without changing the tools you already use.
Frequently asked
Before you request the audit
Why is it free?
Because it serves us as much as it serves you: it tells us whether we can be useful before we propose anything at all. Charging for an audit of a business we know nothing about would mean billing you for our own discovery time. We would rather give it away and turn down the work we could not deliver well.
Am I committed to working with you afterwards?
No, and that is a contractual commitment rather than a sales line: nothing is signed before the audit, the report is handed over whatever happens, and we do not chase you. If the action plan suits you but you would rather have another provider carry it out, the document is precise enough for that.
Do we have to give you administrator access?
Not for the audit. We look at the machines and the equipment with you, or with whoever normally looks after them, without installing an agent or keeping remote access. Passwords stay with you: we ask for none, and you should never write one into a form or an email.
Do you travel to our town?
We travel across Nice, Cannes, Antibes, Sophia Antipolis, Alpes-Maritimes, PACA, as well as Grasse, Menton and the Principality of Monaco. In an emergency we are on site within 24 hours. Part of the audit can be done remotely where a full visit is not justified.
What if the report finds nothing serious?
That is a result, not a failure. You leave with a written stocktake that answers your insurer or your client, and we have no proposal to make you. It happens, and it is exactly why the work is free.
Request your audit
A few lines about what you do and how many of you there are will be enough. We come back to you within one working day to agree a date.
Or write to us at contact@mzmail.fr. Mon–Fri 9:30am–5pm.