You're growing fast, hiring monthly, and the next investor round or enterprise customer wants real cyber answers — not a slide deck. We're the IT layer underneath: Microsoft 365 set up properly from day one, Cyber Essentials in weeks not quarters, single sign-on across your SaaS stack, joiner/leaver automated, board- and investor-ready cyber posture kept live. No full-time IT hire required.
The latest UK Government data on cyber risk for small businesses — the same numbers your next due-diligence questionnaire will quote.
Sources: UK Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026 (DSIT, 30 April 2026) · UK Cyber Security Sectoral Analysis 2026.
Inology IT supports startups and scale-ups (10–50 staff) across Greater Manchester and the wider North-West with managed IT shaped around the startup reality — fast hiring, remote and hybrid teams, a SaaS stack that's grown by accident, and a security posture that won't survive the first enterprise customer questionnaire or VC due diligence. We set up Microsoft 365 properly from day one, take you through Cyber Essentials certification ahead of funding rounds and enterprise sales, wire single sign-on across your SaaS apps via Entra ID, automate joiner/leaver and contractor lifecycles, ship devices pre-enrolled in Intune, and keep a one-page cyber posture summary ready for investors, board and customer security teams. No full-time IT hire required — scaled per-user, per-month, no surprise step-changes when you double in size.
The IT shape is different — devices arrive monthly, contractors come and go, the SaaS stack mutates weekly, and the first enterprise customer or VC will ask harder cyber questions than you've ever answered. Most MSPs sell you the SME contract anyway. We size IT to the growth curve, automate the bits that scale linearly with headcount, and only charge you for what genuinely needs paid support.
A fast-growing team is constantly hiring, and most startups we audit have leaver accounts still active months — sometimes a year — after the person left. Source code, customer data, AWS keys still accessible. Investors and enterprise customers ask about this specifically. We automate the lifecycle: provisioned in minutes with role-correct access, closed the same day they leave, audit log kept.
Slack, Notion, Linear, GitHub, HubSpot, Xero, AWS, Vercel — each one signed up by a different person, with passwords in someone's head and no single sign-on. We wire Entra ID as the identity layer, enable SSO across the stack, and turn one departure into one click that revokes everything. Most M365 Business Premium tenants already include the licensing.
The day before the term sheet, the week of the enterprise customer security review, the morning the SOC 2-adjacent questionnaire lands — that's when most startups discover their cyber posture isn't documented. We keep a board- and investor-ready one-pager live, refreshed quarterly, mapped to Cyber Essentials and the common UK enterprise questionnaire patterns.
Startups aren't small SMEs with ambition. The shape is different — fast hiring, contractors, remote and hybrid teams, a SaaS stack that's grown by accident, source code and customer data on a mix of company and bring-your-own devices, and a cyber posture that's about to be tested by either an enterprise customer or an investor. We support startups, scale-ups and fast-growing technology businesses across Greater Manchester and the wider North-West. We know what enterprise procurement asks in a vendor security review, what Cyber Essentials evidence looks like for a 20-person team, what investor due diligence packs cover on the IT side, and how to keep an M365 tenant tidy when you're going from 12 to 50 staff in a year.
We're not a CTO replacement and we don't pretend to be — if you have a strong technical founder or fractional CTO, we play nicely alongside them. We take the IT layer they don't want to be doing: helpdesk, device shipping, M365 admin, joiner/leaver, cyber paperwork. They focus on the product. We focus on the IT underneath.
A 30-minute call, on the phone or video. Stage, headcount, hiring plan, where the team works, the SaaS stack, what's coming up — investor round, enterprise customer, new market. We listen first.
M365 tenant tidy-up, identity and MFA, conditional access, device baseline, SaaS SSO map, joiner/leaver process, backup, incident playbook. You get a written read pitched at founders and investors, not just techies.
Cyber Essentials in 6–8 weeks, M365 properly set up, SSO across the SaaS stack, joiner/leaver automated, devices shipped pre-enrolled, board and investor cyber summary kept live. One number to ring, somebody who understands the stage you're at.
Helpdesk, device shipping, monthly reporting, sized for fast hiring. The baseline that everything else sits on. Per-user pricing that scales linearly with you.
Tenant, identity, MFA, conditional access, Intune device enrolment, SharePoint that doesn't sprawl. Set up correctly from day one — not retro-fitted in a panic later.
UK baseline certification in 6–8 weeks — what investors, enterprise customers and government buyers increasingly require. With a startup-specific remediation pack.
Immutable M365 and server backup. Source-code repos, customer data, finance — restore-tested quarterly. The control investors ask about in due diligence.
We're not auditors and we don't pretend to be — but we know which IT-side evidence each of these expects, and we keep it ready ahead of when you'll be asked.
Startup IT for us isn't a vibe — it's a score. SecureState™ is our 18-point benchmark covering identity, endpoint, email, backup, awareness and recovery. We re-score your business every 90 days and produce a one-page report your board, your investors and your enterprise customers can read without translation. When the next due-diligence questionnaire lands, the answer is already in writing — signed, dated, and explainable line by line.
See how SecureState worksProbably yes — but not the full enterprise contract. Most startups we onboard between 10 and 25 staff have a Microsoft 365 tenant set up by a founder or first hire, devices in three different lifecycle states, and a cyber posture that won't survive the first proper due diligence. We size the service to where you actually are: a sensible baseline now, scaled up the day you hire your tenth engineer or land your first enterprise customer. No full-time IT hire required for years.
Yes — and this is the request that brings most startups to us. Enterprise procurement (large corporates, NHS trusts, government) sends a 60–120 question security questionnaire before they'll sign. We've completed dozens of these. We deliver the underlying controls — MFA, conditional access, endpoint protection, backup, joiner/leaver, incident playbook — get you Cyber Essentials certified, and fill in the questionnaire alongside you. Typical time from engagement to a customer-ready answer is 6–10 weeks.
We automate it. A single form creates the M365 account with role-correct access, MFA enrolled, the right SaaS apps assigned via SSO, and the device shipped pre-enrolled. Same form on departure — accounts closed the same day, SaaS access revoked, device wiped on return, audit log kept. Contractors get time-bound accounts that close themselves on the date you set. No more dormant accounts, no more "who has access to what" panic at investor due diligence.
Yes — and most startups underuse this. We connect Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) as the identity provider, then enable SSO into the apps your team actually uses: Slack, Google Workspace, GitHub, Notion, Linear, HubSpot, Salesforce, Xero, AWS, Vercel, the lot. One login, MFA enforced everywhere, leaver kills access across the whole stack in one click. Most M365 Business Premium tenants already include the licensing — we just turn it on properly.
Yes. VC and growth-stage investors increasingly ask for evidence of: MFA on all accounts, a documented incident response process, leaver process that actually works, IP and source-code access controls, backup, and a cyber certification or attestation. We build the underlying controls, get you Cyber Essentials certified (the UK baseline most investors accept), and produce a one-page cyber posture summary suitable for board and DD packs. Pitched at investors and customers, not just techies.
Yes, that's most of our startup clients. We ship devices pre-enrolled in Microsoft Intune so they arrive ready to use, with the right apps and security baseline. Helpdesk is phone, email and chat — engineers are in Denton, Manchester, working UK hours. For the one or two times a year somebody needs hands-on help, we either travel out, use a national engineer partner, or — if you're inside Greater Manchester — we're on-site within 30 minutes for P1 issues.
Per-user, per-month, no surprises. The Baseline tier is £55/user/month with no setup fee — sensible for early-stage teams who need solid IT but aren't yet doing enterprise contracts. Plus (£70/user/month, £850 setup) adds the security controls most growing startups need: full EDR, immutable backup, conditional access. Complete (£85/user/month) adds 24/7 SOC and ISO 27001 readiness — usually relevant once you're regulated or doing public-sector work. When you double in size, the price doubles linearly — no nasty step-changes, no renegotiation theatre. Full breakdown in our UK managed IT cost per user 2026 guide.
Even better. Most startups have a sharp engineer who's been holding IT together as a side job. We take the things you don't want them doing — helpdesk tickets, device shipping, M365 admin, joiner/leaver, cyber paperwork — and leave the interesting work with them. They focus on the product. We focus on the IT layer underneath. Plays nicely with a fractional CTO or head of engineering.
Startups and scale-ups we support across Manchester (Spinningfields, Northern Quarter, Ancoats), Stockport, Trafford (MediaCityUK, Trafford Park), Tameside and Oldham — plus remote-first teams across the North-West. If your team's outside Greater Manchester, we still might be a fit — see our IT support coverage across Greater Manchester.
Hiring scales linearly. Cyber answers ready before the questionnaire arrives. Joiner and leaver done in minutes, not weeks. The investor and the enterprise customer get clean answers in writing. The team focuses on the product — not on whose Slack still works.
Talk to Brett or Simon. 30 minutes, on the phone or video. No deck, no decision pressure — we'll tell you honestly whether we can help.