Node4 News

Microsoft has named Node4 an Inner Circle member for AI Business Solutions for the sixth consecutive year, placing us among just three UK-centric partners to achieve the recognition.

It reflects our continued investment in our people and expertise, our close relationship with Microsoft and our focus on the technology shaping what comes next, helping us create more value for the customers we support.

Watch the video to find out what six years in Microsoft’s Inner Circle means for our customers.

Would you back your IT director for taking a critical service offline if the attack they feared never happened?

Even if it disrupted customers? Even if it cost you money?

Your answer says quite a lot about how resilient your business really is.

On September 25th, secure file-transfer provider Kiteworks recommended a precautionary shutdown after receiving credible intelligence about a potential attack. It said it had no indication that its own or its customers’ systems had been compromised. The recommendation was lifted on 27 September. Kiteworks’ statement.

We don’t have enough public information to judge every aspect of that decision. But the situation exposes a problem that deserves more attention.

We have spent years teaching technology teams that downtime is failure. Contracts penalise it. Dashboards turn red. Boards demand explanations.

Then we expect those same teams to interrupt a service voluntarily when they believe continuing to operate could cause greater damage.

That takes more than a security tool. It takes a business prepared to support the decision.

The incentives are uncomfortable. The cost of stopping is immediate and visible. The damage prevented may never be measurable. Someone will ask whether the interruption was really necessary.

If we judge the decision purely by whether an attack subsequently happened, we teach people to wait for proof. By then, their options may be considerably worse.

I think this belongs on the board agenda, before the next incident forces it there.

Choose one service your business depends on. Imagine your security team recommends isolating it this afternoon.

Who can authorise that? How long can the business tolerate the interruption?

What will customers be told? What evidence will you require before reconnecting it?

If those answers depend on getting the right people into an emergency meeting, you have already built delay into your response.
This becomes more important as we connect more of the business and give software greater autonomy. An automated process can keep making changes while people are still debating whether to intervene. As AI agents gain access to operational systems, the ability to contain their actions needs to be part of the design.

I want us to be ambitious about that technology. But I would challenge any proposal that explains how an autonomous service starts working without explaining how we regain control of it.

The same challenge applies to recovery. A successful backup is useful evidence. A rehearsal showing that the business can resume work safely is much stronger.

At Node4, this is where our security, cloud, managed services and recovery capabilities need to work together. Our portfolio gives us the opportunity to help customers make these decisions with a clear understanding of the consequences and a tested route back. That is the standard we should hold ourselves to.

For customers, my challenge is simple: at your next leadership meeting, ask who has permission to stop a critical service to protect the business.

Then ask whether you would support that person if the threat passed without incident. If the honest answer is no, your resilience problem starts in the boardroom.