Here’s a useful question to ask before the next busy period: if the person who manages your website was unavailable tomorrow, could your business still get access to it?
Now ask the same question about your domain, business email and social accounts.
These details are easy to put off while everything is working. An account gets created for a project, the confirmation email goes to one person and everyone moves on. A few years later, nobody is quite sure which provider holds the domain or whose phone receives the login code.
Sorting it out becomes much more difficult when you’re also trying to resolve an outage or launch a campaign.
Start with a simple account register
Make a list of the services the business relies on. Include the domain registrar, website hosting, email, cloud storage, social platforms and any other tools that would cause a problem if access disappeared.
For each service, record who manages it, who pays for it and which business contact receives renewal or account notices. You don’t need to put passwords in this document. Its job is to show what exists and who is responsible for it.
Check the details against the actual accounts. An old invoice may tell you who supplied a service at the time without confirming who controls it today.
Make business control clear
Where a platform supports it, keep ownership and billing under the business and give staff or suppliers their own appropriate access. Having someone manage a service on your behalf should come with a clear understanding of how access works if the arrangement changes.
This is worth discussing when a project begins. Who will hold the domain account? Who can approve account changes? What gets handed over at completion? Which subscriptions continue, and who is responsible for paying them?
Get those answers in writing. It gives both sides something to refer to and avoids a rushed conversation later about assumptions nobody realised they were making.
Review access as people come and go
Use individual logins where available and limit permissions to what each person needs. Remove access promptly when staff or suppliers finish their work. Turn on multi-factor authentication wherever it’s supported, particularly for important accounts such as email and cloud storage. Use unique passwords and a password manager to help manage them securely.
Recovery arrangements also deserve attention. Check that the business has an approved way to recover access if a device is lost or an administrator leaves. Store recovery information securely and make sure the right people know the process. Sharing a login code around a group chat is a poor substitute for a planned arrangement.
Know how you would recover your files
Access to a service and recovery of its contents are separate questions. Understand what is backed up, how often copies are made, how long they’re retained and who can restore them. Include information held in email and cloud services when reviewing the plan. Test recovery at agreed intervals so you’re checking what actually works.
Consider the operational side too. If your website needs restoring, who contacts the provider? If email is unavailable, how will the team coordinate the response? Give those responsibilities to named people rather than leaving them implied.
You don’t have to untangle every account in one afternoon. Start with the services that would interrupt work immediately, then work through the rest. At Audex Media, we help businesses organise their technology and access arrangements so everyday support has a clearer starting point.
