Podcast transcript: How umbrella companies exploit IT contractors

Podcast transcript: How umbrella companies exploit IT contractors

This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘How umbrella companies exploit IT contractors’. To listen to the full episode, click here. We apologise for any errors.

Adam Shepherd

Hi, I'm Adam Shepherd.

Jane McCallion

And I'm Jane McCallion.

Adam

And you're listening to the IT Pro Podcast. It seems that Summer is officially over, so fittingly, we’re talking this week about umbrellas - or more specifically, umbrella companies.

Jane

Now, rather than manufacturing rain deflection devices, umbrella companies act as an intermediary between contractors and their clients. They're commonly used within the IT industry. And if you've been in the game for a while, chances are you've probably interacted with one in some capacity.

Adam

However, concerns have been raised about the conduct and ethics of umbrella companies. Together with Rebecca Seeley Harris, chair of the Employment Status Forum. InniAccounts CEO James Poyser has been campaigning for government action, accusing umbrella companies of dodging taxes, scamming workers and skirting their rights.

Jane

He joins us this week to discuss why this has become such a critical issue and how both government and the private sector can address it. James, it's pleasure to have you back with us.

James Poyser

Indeed, yeah, absolutely. And a lot's happened since we last spoke!

Jane

Just a bit.

Adam

So James, for those who might not be familiar, what is an umbrella company? And why have they become so relevant now?

James

So the easiest way to think about an umbrella company, it's like an outsourced payroll provider. So if you're an IT contractor, you get a temporary contract, the client is going to hand over some money that's, that's gross, that hasn't been taxed. And somebody along the way needs to deduct the taxes, pay a pay slip, pay the money over to HMRC. And if the end client doesn't want to do this themselves, then they can use an umbrella company. And that's essentially what an umbrella does, takes this untaxed income, and passes it on to HMRC, and passes net pay to the contractor. It's slightly different, though, to just being purely an outsourced payroll provider, because when you use an umbrella company, they become your employer. So if you think if you're an end client, this is great because they don't have to deal with any of the complexities of employment law, unemployment issues like discrimination, maternity, pesky redundancy pay, and all of those things. They can hand it off entirely to an umbrella company who take care of all of that for them. And to your question about why is it so relevant right now? Well, if you think about the IR35 change, which I'm sure many of your listeners are aware of, where with IR35, your end client has to determine whether you are an employee who needs to be taxed like an employee, or whether you're actually self employed, and you can take responsibility for your own tax. So you would appoint an accountant and work together to pay the right amount of tax. Now, the challenge with IR35 is that end clients have got to assess each individual contractor to figure out whether an employee or whether they're self employed. And if you're a large bank with thousands of contractors, it's a really big task. So a lot of the end clients are taking the easy option, which is saying, you know what, we're not going to bother doing these assessments, all we're going to do is mandate that everybody uses an umbrella company, so everybody becomes employees for tax purposes. And better still, you know, a bonus for the clients. They don't have to deal with those employment issues. And that's why there's been such a huge influx of umbrella users over the last year or so. And one of the challenges is the umbrella market is unregulated. And even the head of a professional body who represents umbrella companies has described it as the Wild West, it's full of opportunists. And contractors for many umbrellas are seen as a commodity that needs to be exploited. And that's the challenges that we're facing at the moment.

Jane

So, I mean, this sounds like it could be quite convenient, especially for the end client and for the umbrella company itself, but to an extent for contractors as well, but you've alleged that some umbrella companies are being used to facilitate unethical business practices. What kind of infractions have you seen in the space?

James

Sure, well, I mean, that there's really, there's the quite egregious stuff that I'm sure a lot of people have heard of. So something that's quite famous is something called the loan charge. So that's one extreme where umbrella companies were paying contractors via loans, and these loans didn't attract income tax and National Insurance. And they sold these schemes to the contractor saying, you know, this is QC approved, or it's HMRC approved; use our umbrella company, and we can help you to maximise, maximise your take home pay, and kind of so so some people went into that with their eyes open, many of the workers were forced into it, their recruitment agents, made them use a particular umbrella company that was using these types of loan schemes because the agent was getting great kickbacks by pushing business in their way. And so that's the kind of the one extreme. HMRC have clamped down on this. The challenge with this so HMRC have gone after contractors who have used these schemes and making them pay back taxes that they've missed plus really, really big penalties on top of that, which have led, i'm sure again, your listeners will know, to a number of suicides on the back of that because this is life changing amounts of money that have been demanded. And one of the challenges there is that the scheme operators themselves, the people who set up these elaborate loan schemes, have never been prosecuted, and they are very rich from the back of selling these schemes. So that's kind of one extreme, and they're still out there in the market. And you know, for each one that springs up HMRC is trying pretty hard to close them down as quickly as they can. So that's, that's the big stuff a lot of people would have heard of, but there's a big problem, which is the things that are lawful, but deeply unethical. So it's things like giving back holiday pay, so you know, an umbrella company who holds back some of your income for holiday pay. And if you don't take that holiday, then they pocket the money. There's things like skimming from payslips. So we know of a few umbrella companies and these are large umbrella companies, these aren't, these aren't tinpot organisations, these are large umbrella companies where their pay slips don't add up. And each week you're out of pocket by, you know, five to 20 pounds a week. When you multiply that through 10,000 contractors with that umbrella company, it's a lot of money. Some of the umbrella companies will sell bogus products without you knowing, such as one umbrella company sells a very poor imitation of income protection insurance. But they've structured it in such a way that they don't have to be FCA, FCA regulated to sell it and they just add it onto your pay slip without you knowing. Overcharging National Insurance. So making you pay more National Insurance than is due but then paying the correct amount to HMRC and keeping the bit in the middle. Overcharging the apprenticeship levy, right down to things like forcing people to opt out of regulations that are designed to protect them and making that a condition of employment. So you know, these schemes are absolutely rife. And these are all, you know, it's just the sum of these little skims and scams, that make umbrellas so profitable. It's got so bad. So last week, the TUC called for an outright ban on umbrella companies. And they turned around and said, these scandalous workplace practices have no place in modern Britain. So it is a really big problem.

Jane

Do you know what, it' s funny, especially listening to the first part of the problem with the loans.

James

Yeah.

Jane

It really reminds me of the sub-postmasters and Horizon, which has only recently been resolved, that it was the subpostmasters who were, you know, fined and put in jail, rather than the company that developed Horizon, or indeed the Post Office itself, not that we want to put the whole Post Office in jail. But it's, it sounds very similar to that kind of thing. And the impact that it's having on people's lives sounds very similar.

James

Indeed, yeah, it's one thing to talk about, you know, I suspect if you're, if you're, you know, working in IT, and you're earning £500 a day, you probably won't attract much sympathy from the Daily Mail, if you got caught out with one of these, one of these schemes. But let's say that you are, you know, a minimum wage worker, you're a bank nurse or care worker who has been pushed into one of these schemes without knowing it, and then you're on the hook for back taxes, and a large penalty as well. That's when it's, you know, it's really, it's quite, quite troublesome.

Adam

So, as you've mentioned, this affects a wide variety of different kind of job roles and industries. But why is it such an important issue for IT professionals in particular?

James

Okay, so it's a good question. In our experience of working with, with IT professionals who are contracting and consulting, there's kind of there's a couple of camps, you're either, you know, you're a high earner, you know, so you might be, you know, think about the kind of the in demand roles, that moment, things like, you know, cybersecurity, cloud architects, that people where it's, you know, it's, it's, it's rocking horse teeth, trying to find people to do those roles at the moment. So they're commanding, you know, good, good daily rates. And from an umbrella point of view, you're very rich pickings, because let's take somebody who was earning £500 a day, you would probably pay an umbrella company about £900 a year, in fees, so that that's your cost that you would pay over. But from you, an umbrella company, we did our calculations, and they can lift about £3,200 a year on top of that, without you knowing, and that's money from you, from HMRC. So, you know, when you talk about those big numbers, there's a big opportunity there. And if you do fall in that category, so if you are in one of these, you know, a fortunate position where you're a high earner, and you've got in demand skills, my advice to you would be to work really, really hard to push to get yourself outside IR35. So you don't have to go near an umbrella company at all and you can take responsibility for your income and paying the right amount of tax and making sure that nobody has got their fingers in the till on the way. So that's the, that's the first cohort of IT workers. The second one are if we look at people who are in roles where there's a lot of supply, so let's think about something like first line IT support where there's a lot of people out there and a lot of the work there is temporary. It's contract-based. A lot of people who are willing to fill those roles. And the challenge with that, because there's a lot of supply, those kind of workers are ripe to be exploited. And that's where things like recruitment agents say, you have to use an umbrella company, and you have to use this specific one, so you don't even get a choice about the umbrella company that you use. My advice, if you're in that position, push really hard, because if you are, if you're a lower paid worker, push really hard to see if you can get a fixed term contract employed directly with the end client, you can still go through a recruitment agent, so that bit's absolutely fine. But you can push hard and say, Actually, I want to go on the books at the end client, and they can employ you as a temporary worker, and it means that you're in a market that's gonna be regulated when it comes to payroll, and you're gonna have more rights and protections. If they can't do that, push your recruitment agent, and ask to go on the agency payroll instead of going on to an umbrella. The thing is with this, so a lot of agents will offer payroll, but you've got to remember the commercials here. If a recruitment agent puts you on the payroll, you suddenly become a cost centre, they've got to run the payroll, they can't charge you for that; it's a cost to them. If they push you down the umbrella route, then the umbrellas will pay referral fees and kickbacks to the recruitment agent. And then you become a profit centre. So that's why a lot of recruitment agents are reluctant to support agency payroll, because they see you as a means to generate more profit.

Jane

If you find yourself in this situation, is it worth just walking away? I know everybody wants work, and nobody likes to have no income. But you know, if you're going to end up worse off for it, is it worth if they're just really pushing you to go to an umbrella company and they're just not having it any other way, should you just walk away?

James

I mean, it's a, it's a good question. It's, it depends, doesn't it? Because it depends on your personal circumstance. It depends on the skills that you've got, it depends how many roles are out there that you could, that you could, you could fill. And this is the challenge isn't it, if you don't have any options, then it's kind of, it's a red flag for being exploited. Because you know, you your power has kind of diminished if you don't have that ability to walk away. But just keep in mind some of the risks that if you do get pushed into one of these rogue schemes, that you're on the hook, you know, it's not going to be a recruitment agent, or the umbrella company who HMRC are going to be knocking on the door for - it's going to be you. So you need to go into it with your, with your eyes open.

Adam

So James, you've called, along with your colleague Rebecca Seeley Harris, for more regulation to address the issue of umbrella companies and the lack of regulation in this space. Can you tell us a little bit more about some of the recommendations that you've made?

James

Yes, yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of people will be very surprised to learn that this market isn't regulated. It's absolutely bonkers when you consider how many people are employed by umbrella companies, we're talking hundreds of thousands of people in many different industries. And it's not regulated. So myself and Rebecca have put a paper forward to the government, which is basically a blueprint on how to get from where we are today, to get to a place where this market is regulated. And some of the recommendations that we've got are things like, you know, fixing holiday pay, so making, you know, giving absolute clarity about expectations around holiday pay, to stop that pocketing of holiday pay. Making sure that pay slips are clearer to stop those skims and scams. And, you know, use an umbrella company, your pay slip's in two parts. One is a pay slip that you would recognise as an employee. And you never see any problems there. Because there's a good amount of legislation that covers that bit. There's also a second part to your pay slip, which is called something like a reconciliation statement or whatever term they want to use. And that's completely unregulated. And they can put what they want on there. And we want to see regulation that tidies that whole thing up. So you can see that money when it comes in from your end client, right the way to when it goes into your, into your bank account, and everything that happens along the way. From a regulation point of view, there's a few different government bodies at the moment that look after the temporary workforce market. And what we called for is the setting up of a single enforcement body to look after this entire market and umbrella companies. The great news is the government has already responded to that and said, Yes, we are going to do it. So they are charging ahead and getting a single enforcement body together. So that's one government organisation that will take responsibility for this market and the regulation of it. And then underneath that, there's some things that we want to do in terms of strengthening existing regulations, bringing things in and just tightening up and tidying up this market. So it's things like stopping recruitment agents forcing workers to use an umbrella as a condition of employment, that is not okay. Making the kickbacks that go from umbrella companies to recruitment agents illegal because that really does drive a lot of these behaviours. The stopping advertising contracts at an inflated rate. And so you know, there's something that's very, it's quite bonkers. It's quite unique to IT as well. When we talk about these umbrella rates, it's that daily rates are advertised before any tax, and it wouldn't happen anywhere else. If you, if your teenage kids are going to get a job, a temporary job flipping, flipping burgers at McDonald's, it would be a gross rate of pay, you know, after all the employment taxes have been paid. But for some reason, it's kind of okay in IT to advertise these rates before things like employers National Insurance and the apprenticeship levy are taken off. So those are the kind of things we want to see stopped, and for a fair rate of pay to be advertised, and things like the loan charges. So as we said, right at the start of the podcast, at the moment, the individuals, the taxpayers themselves, the IT contractors are on the hook for loan charges. And what we want to see is to make the promoters responsible for any tax issues, not the individuals.

Adam

The thing that I keep coming back to throughout all this is the 1920s and 30s. In the US in America, this, this kind of has the air of the kind of situation that you used to get with like railroad workers, and the kind of railway robber barons, you know, the idea of being forced to work for one specific umbrella company, as a condition of employment is crazy to me.

James

Yeah. I mean, and the fact that they, you know, in many places that they exist in the first place is a little bit bonkers, because there's plenty of ways out there to pay people fairly and to make sure they're protected. And it feels like that's the kind of economy that we, that we should have, and we should be proud of is where temporary work is absolutely fine. And people, you know, both, both, both ends of the spectrum can benefit from that, be it the end client or the workers themselves. But let's just make sure it's fair, right, let's make sure that people aren't getting exploited along the way. And that's one of the challenges with this not being regulated is there's just too much opportunity for, for exploitation. And, you know, it kind of, it feels like, so there's a chap called Matthew Taylor, who wrote a report on modern Britain and, and working and the future of working in the UK. And, you know, there's this, there's this real opportunity for the UK to be really famous for things like having a really flexible, contingent, temporary workforce that allows us just to move quickly, be very agile and get things done. Yet that hasn't translated into into legislation. I feel like you know, our contractors and consultants and temporary workers, they should be celebrated. And they should be protected, because I think it gives a great, as an economy, it gives a great advantage against many other developed economies. But unfortunately, legislation isn't keeping up with this. And this is the problem we're facing today.

Jane

Yeah, and that's a good point. Plenty of people in IT, indeed, in journalism, nursing, whatever, choose to become independent contractors, because that suits them better as well. And like you say, for companies, it suits them better. So it does seem to me as well, a little bit, a little bit mad. You know, we're kind of undermining the fact that there is something that could be really good with something that feels almost like a pyramid scheme.

Adam

I mean, the irony is, for me, a lot of contractors, you know, become free agents and freelancers, specifically to get away from restrictive employment conditions and to have more freedom in who they work for, how they work, all of that kind of stuff. So for them to get kind of almost accidentally sucked into these exploitative situations seems very unfair.

James

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's, I think, sometimes you can't help but feel that if you looked at it through the lens of HMRC, they would assume that every single IT contractor became a contractor with one objective in mind, which is to dodge tax. And, you know, if you spend time talking to IT, to IT contractors, it's absolutely not the case. It's things like, you know, you know this well, so, you're a technical specialist, and you realise, if you stay as a perm, you're going to have to become a manager, and that really isn't your jam. So you're going to become a contractor, you're going to become a consultant, you want to work on a variety of different products, you want more flexibility, work life balance, perhaps you've got kids who need a bit more help at home. So you can work that three day week and have a couple of days at home, and still earn the same as if you're a permanent employee. There's all these, there's many, many reasons why people move into becoming a contractor or a consultant. And let's just make sure it's fair, right? It's not okay for people to make that decision. And then for somebody in the supply chain to think it's okay to exploit them. And that's the problem that we've got today.

Adam

So, James, how can both employers and contractors spot a good umbrella, an umbrella that isn't going to take advantage of them, that isn't going to place these restrictions on them and dip their hands into their pockets?

James

Yeah, that's, I mean, it's a really good question. I mean, the good news is there are lots of umbrella companies out there so there is a lot of choice. The bad news is it's very difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, particularly if you're standing there as an outsider, you know, I've been in this market for, you know, 15 years now. And I can tell you who some of the really good guys are. But that's just through developing personal relationships with them. And so I think it's a good starting point. So you can, you can consider some of the professional bodies, there's two professional bodies, that look after umbrella companies. The thing to bear in mind with these, though, are that the professional bodies are there to look after the umbrella companies, not you as a consultant or contractor. So it's a good starter for 10. But don't think by any stretch of imagination, because an umbrella company's got a badge, that they're always going to act in your best interests. So instead, I think it's really worthwhile reaching out and talking to umbrella companies directly and having a few conversations. And there's so much choice out there that if something smells wrong, then you can walk away, if you just get the slightest whiff of suspicion, then walk away from that umbrella company and start asking around and go to a different umbrella company. And the things that you ought to look out for are, ask them for an example payslip and see how things are broken down. Ask them about their holiday pay, and how that works. Go out there and ask them about recruitment agent referral fees, because the good umbrellas will put their hands up and say, You know what, we don't like doing it, but we do it. And this is how we approach it. And if they skirt the question altogether, then that's a big, big red flag for me. Certainly, you know, with your recruitment agent, if they're asking you, if they're recommending umbrella companies, if they're a member of a recruitment professional body, they, they're obliged to be transparent. So you can ask your recruitment agency, okay, so you're going to recommend these, these umbrella companies to me, what's in it for you. And if one of those umbrella companies is paying more in commission to that recruitment agent than you're paying them as a fee, then that's a massive red flag, because the only place that can come from is from these skims and scams that we've, that we've, that we've mentioned. And the, you know, again, I don't, I don't want to name any names in terms of who you should go for. But in my experience, the, the big guys are generally best avoided, and go out there for the smaller, independently owned companies, there's a number of firms out there, who are people who've worked in the umbrella industry for a long time, and don't really like what they've seen and thought, you know what, I'm gonna do this, do this differently, and go out there and set up my own umbrella company. A lot of smaller umbrella companies are owner managed. So pick up the phone, have a chat to them. Take a look on LinkedIn. So a lot of the umbrella companies, the smaller umbrella company owners are active on LinkedIn, and you'll very quickly be able to figure out what's going on. Are they giving out good solid advice? Or are they just delivering a constant sales pitch? And you'll soon figure out who the good guys are and and who's worth avoiding.

Adam

Am I right in thinking that Off-Payroll includes a section for kind of comparison of umbrella companies, for contractors to share their experiences?

James

So the moment Off-Payroll has got a section on umbrellas, but we're specifically on there talking about how they worked through Coronavirus and the the job retention scheme. However, in the second half of this year, we are about to launch a new feature, a new section. And for each umbrella company, we're coming up with a checklist of about 30 items that covers a lot of the things that were discussed in this podcast. So yeah, stay tuned, we're a couple months away from getting that over line. It's an IT project, after all! So we're running a little bit, a little bit behind. But hopefully yes, that will help to bring a bit more transparency to the market and help people to find the good umbrella companies.

Jane

So obviously, you know, most of the client companies want to behave and act ethically as well. What can they do to make sure that any umbrella company they are using or working with is behaving in an ethical way as well?

James

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I think it varies from organisation to organisation, so many organisations know what's going on in their supply chain. And for many others, an umbrella company is very, very far down supply chain, they just don't have a visibility of it, because it might go through two or three different recruitment agents, and then to the umbrella and then to the end worker. And so many organisations in our experience don't actually have that much visibility because they don't have day to day contact with umbrella companies. But they need to think quite carefully about that, for two reasons. One's very tangible and one's a bit more intangible. Let's talk about something very tangible, which is something called the Criminal Finances Act. So if you're an end client, and somebody in your supply chain is carrying out tax evasion, you're on the hook for it. So as an end client, you are criminally liable if you do not prevent an umbrella company from carrying out tax evasion. So to put your hands up and say I knew nothing about it guv doesn't wash so end clients have actually got to think very carefully about what's going on and who they've got in their labour supply chain. And the second part is more about the, the kind of, the Corporate Social Responsibility risk. So is this really a market that you want to be part of when you're seeing workers exploited, the skims, the scams, the commissions that have been paid to recruitment agents. Some of the umbrella companies out there have links to organised crime...

Adam

Really?

James

Yeah, did I not mention that?

Jane

When you were talking about, when you, Adam, raised, you know, kind of like a flashback to 100 years ago, I was thinking, wow, this sounds like a protection racket as well.

Adam

Yeah, it really does!

James

Yeah, yeah, there is, there is that yeah, that goes off, particularly in offshore tax jurisdictions. There's, there's quite a big operation going on, at the moment, in the Isle of Man, where umbrella companies are implicated in that. And it's kind of organised crime, you know, it's not, it's not some guy on the street, you know, flogging you car stereos, you know, it's far more sophisticated than that, involving things like VAT fraud. You know, but but it but it's happening, it's going on out there because, you know, the money involved is is huge, right? You know, when, when you've got, you know, a thousand IT contractors earning £500 a day, it's, it's quite a tempting proposition to have your, have your fingers in the till, so that that's why these things happen. So that's, you know, that the risk to an organisation, think about that corporate response and social responsibility and who you want to be. And some end clients are getting this right, and what they're doing is realising that they need to audit their labour supply chain from end to end. And there is a very large online retailer, for example, who are getting this right, so they use umbrella companies throughout their supply chain, but they partner and they select the umbrella companies, they do a thorough audit of everything, they make sure their workers are protected. And we've seen things like you know, so throughout Coronavirus, the employees of the umbrellas working for this particular end client, very well protected, very well looked after throughout the, throughout the pandemic. So you can do things correctly, it is possible to have an umbrella in your supply chain, and to be a good, honest, ethical employer, as well. And if you just kind of sit back, sit there at arm's length and say, it's something that happens further down supply chain, it's the recruiters problem, then you need to be very, very careful that you don't end up with a few problems in the future around the Criminal Finances Act.

Adam

I mean, fundamentally, you should treat your labour supply chain the same way you treat any other supply chain, you know, if you know, if you don't know what's going on throughout it, there's a huge amount of risk of kind of, of suppliers, doing, you know, unscrupulous things, skirting regulations and saying, Oh, no, you know, we, we had no knowledge of it, you know, Your Honour. Yes. Doesn't, doesn't always wash. And you know, even if you managed to dodge, you know, the legal ramifications and managed to dodge prosecution, it's not gonna look great from a reputational perspective, you know, organisations might think twice with, about partnering with you, if you are one of these companies that kind of distances themselves from what happens in their own supply chain.

Jane

So we've laid out quite a dire landscape here. Are things improving? Or are they likely to get worse, before they get better? Are they going to get better?

James

I have seen no sign of improving as of yet. And obviously, myself and Rebecca are pushing for regulation. And the government is saying yep, we're setting up a single enforcement body. But the machine that is government takes time, it is going to be many years until the cavalry arrives with the legislation to sort this out. So, so don't count on something happening from a legislative point of view anytime soon to fix this market. So then it's down to the power of the contractors. And we've seen this with Off-Payroll. So contractors who are avoiding unfair clients, clients who can't deliver fair IR35 determinations. And I think we're going to see the same thing start to happen here. The IT contractor community is very tightly knit, contractors know one another, they ask each other for recommendations. And if one of them has a bad experience with an umbrella company, it's going to be on that WhatsApp group, it's going to be shared. And those those kind of things will start to ripple through the the IT contractor community. And hopefully, conversely, the recommendations for the good umbrellas will also go out through the, through the community as well. So whilst I don't think the legislation is going to have a big impact, I think probably what's going to happen is that as the number of people who are using umbrella companies starts to increase. I think the story won't go away. I think we'll hear more and more about the problems that are going on, contractors coming out with specific examples and saying yes, you know, I was impacted by that as well. I've lost out on £2,000 of holiday pay because of this industry giant who pocketed it. So I think we will see more of a grassroots approach to umbrella companies and helping people to find good umbrella companies. This is obviously great for the IT world, because we're talking about mainly professional people, well connected in a place where they've got a choice and they can do something about it. But we still need this legislation to protect people who aren't in a position to have those choices.

Adam

Well, I'm afraid that's what we've got time for this week. But James, thank you for coming back to join us.

James

Thank you.

Jane

You can find links to all of the topics we've spoken about today in the show notes and even more on our website itpro.co.uk.

Adam

You can also follow us on Twitter at @ITPro as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Jane

If you're enjoying the IT Pro Podcast, don't forget to subscribe and if you can, leave a rating and a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and we'll be back next week with more from the world of IT. But until then, goodbye.

Adam

Bye.

ITPro

ITPro is a global business technology website providing the latest news, analysis, and business insight for IT decision-makers. Whether it's cyber security, cloud computing, IT infrastructure, or business strategy, we aim to equip leaders with the data they need to make informed IT investments.

For regular updates delivered to your inbox and social feeds, be sure to sign up to our daily newsletter and follow on us LinkedIn and Twitter.