Straight answers about the things that go wrong with technology.

I spent 7+ years working for IT providers, securing networks, recovering data, and watching how businesses and people actually get caught out. I now work independently. Pick whichever of these describes you.

For businesses Protect what the business runs on Recovery you've actually tested, networks an intruder can't roam, security questionnaires you can answer honestly, and staff who spot an invoice scam before it's paid. See business services → For individuals & families Scams, privacy and everyday tech How the scams actually work, what to lock down at home, and plain help with the technology itself. Explained properly, at whatever pace suits you, with nothing to sell you afterwards. See personal sessions → For students Advice from someone who did it Project direction, certification routes, and an honest picture of what the work is really like. The conversation I'd have wanted when I was in college. See student sessions →

For businesses

Fixed scope, fixed fee, and something written down at the end of it.

Aimed at organisations of roughly 5–250 staff, particularly manufacturing, multi-site retail and professional services. We agree the scope and the fee before anything starts, so you know what you're getting and what it costs.

€100 45-minute first conversation. Any work that follows is quoted separately, fixed scope and fixed fee.

Start Here · IT Foundations Review

Not sure where you stand? Most businesses aren't, and that's the problem.

Before any of the work below is worth doing, it helps to know what you actually have. Systems get added one at a time over years, usually by different people, and nobody ever sits down and writes the whole picture out. This is that sitting down. No jargon, no assumed knowledge, and no judgement about what we find.

Where your data actually lives, including the copies nobody planned

Whether multi-factor authentication is on, and on what

Who has administrative access, and who still has access after leaving

What is backed up, and what quietly isn't

What happens to the business if a laptop, a server or an account is lost

Which of it matters enough to spend money on, and which of it doesn't

You come away with a plain-English picture of where you stand and a short list of what's worth doing next, in order. Often that list is shorter and cheaper than people expect.

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

Your backups ran last night. When did anyone last prove you could restore from them?

Backup software reporting success is not the same as a business that can recover. I test the restore process rather than the report, and measure how long it genuinely takes against what the business assumes.

Live test restore, witnessed and documented
Real recovery times against your stated targets
Written gap analysis ranked by business impact
Costed options, with no obligation to use me for the fix

Cybercrime Awareness & Prevention

Someone in accounts gets an email from a supplier with new bank details.

Invoice redirection and CEO impersonation are among the most expensive things happening to small and mid-sized businesses, and they rarely involve anything resembling hacking. What actually helps is unglamorous: staff who recognise the pattern before it works, and email that can't be convincingly forged.

Staff session on how these scams actually run
SPF, DKIM and DMARC review to stop domain spoofing
A written first-hour plan for if it happens anyway

Network Security & Segmentation

One compromised laptop on a flat network reaches the production floor.

In most manufacturing environments I've worked in, operational technology shares a network with everything else. It is often running software that can't be patched, and often needs nothing more than file access to do its job. I map what genuinely talks to what, then design segmentation that permits only that.

Current-state topology and traffic mapping
Segmentation design with least-privilege rules
Phased plan with defined rollback points
Documentation your own team can work from

Governance, Risk & Compliance

A customer or insurer has sent you a security questionnaire. Now what?

Every renewal brings harder questions about multi-factor everywhere, endpoint detection, tested recovery and segmented networks. Answering optimistically is its own risk. I establish what's actually true about your IT estate today and set out the shortest credible route to a better answer.

Honest position against each control asked about
Prioritised plan with effort and cost attached
Evidence pack for the controls you already meet
Groundwork that carries into NIS2 and ISO 27001

Working with an IT provider already? Good. Most of this sits alongside them rather than replacing them. I also take specialist and overflow work directly from managed service providers and IT firms who need a second pair of hands on segmentation, recovery testing or a deadline.

For individuals & families

The questions people ask me at parties, answered properly and in private.

Sessions for anyone who's been targeted, thinks a family member is being targeted, or simply wants to get technology working for them rather than the other way round. Plain language, no jargon, no question treated as a silly one, and nothing to sell you at the end.

€50 45-minute session

How the scams actually work

Romance and investment fraud, fake trading platforms, and the long-game approaches that build trust over months before any money moves. Once you've seen the shape of one, the rest become recognisable, which is the real protection.

"Is this legitimate?"

A second opinion on a platform, message, investment pitch or job offer before you commit anything. Bring what you've received and we'll go through it together. To be clear: I advise on whether something is a fraud, not on whether an investment is a good idea. The second is regulated advice and I'm not authorised to give it.

Crypto, without the hype or the doom

How wallets, keys and exchanges actually function, why "not your keys" matters, and how the recovery-phrase and fake-support scams take people. The mechanics, so you can judge for yourself.

Protecting an older parent

Practical steps for a family member being targeted by phone, post or online: what to change, what to say, and how to help without taking away their independence.

Privacy and household security

Accounts, passwords, home network, phones, and the devices that arrived with an app you never asked for. A realistic tidy-up rather than a counsel of perfection.

Choosing a computer or phone

What you actually need for the things you actually do, rather than whatever the shop is pushing this month. I'll help you work out the specification, tell you where spending more is worth it and where it makes no difference, and get it set up if you'd like.

Getting to grips with online services

Banking apps, government portals, appointment booking, and forms written as though you already know how they work. We go through it at whatever pace suits you, as many times as it takes, and I'll write the steps down so you have them afterwards.

If money has already gone, act now rather than booking a session. Contact your bank immediately and ask them to attempt a recall, since same-day action gives the best chance, then report it to the police, through whichever fraud reporting route applies where you are. Be aware that firms offering to recover lost funds for a fee are very often a second scam aimed at the same victim. I don't offer recovery, and nobody legitimate will guarantee it.

For students

The conversation I'd have wanted in third year.

I did a computer systems networking degree and went straight into support, then security, then service delivery. These sessions are priced well below my business rates. They're not a business line, they're the thing I wish had existed when I was doing it.

€25 30-minute session

Final year project direction

A sounding board for scope, architecture and what's realistically achievable in the time you have. I'll tell you where a design will fall over and what an industry reviewer would ask. I won't write it, build it or debug it for you. That's your work and it needs to stay yours.

Which certifications are worth it

Which ones open a door, which ones employers barely notice, and the order to take them in. There's a lot of advice on this and much of it is written by the people selling the exam.

What the job is actually like

Support, networking, SOC work, service delivery. What each is like day to day, what burns people out, and how the moves between them work in practice.

CV and interview preparation

A read of your CV from the side of the table that receives them, and a practice run at the technical questions you'll face for a first role.

"Gregor went through my CV properly, helped me restructure sections and picked out points I hadn't thought to include. The most useful part was him helping me pull out and phrase specific achievements I wouldn't have thought to add myself."

GuranshMonash University, Melbourne

"Always available to demonstrate and teach whenever a problem needed solving. His hands-off approach allowed me to learn effectively while he kept me on the right track. I learned a lot from my time with him."

JoeATU Sligo

"Approachable, effective and efficient. He listened to understand the issue at hand and then adapted his response depending on the task, difficulty or urgency required. I'd recommend him without hesitation."

DavinATU Sligo

Who you'd be working with

7+ years working for managed service providers. First as the engineer customers rang directly instead of going through the helpdesk, then running service delivery, working out what was actually being promised to clients and whether it was being delivered.

What I liked most in both jobs was the awkward problem. The one that had been sitting in a queue for weeks, or the one nobody could describe properly yet. Deciding to deal with something rather than work around it is usually the hard part. The technical side tends to follow.

So if something is bothering you and you're not certain it's worth raising, raise it. I'll tell you straight whether I can help, whether your existing provider should be handling it, or whether you're in better shape than you thought. If I take it on, I'll go at it properly and keep you in the loop rather than disappearing into it for a fortnight.

Where the experience comes from

Multi-site network delivery Led a segmentation project across a 140-site retail estate, coordinating field engineers and acting as the technical escalation point throughout.

Security monitoring Worked in a SOC team investigating network traffic across multiple client environments, from alert triage through to remediation guidance during live incidents.

Backup and recovery Managed backup estates across Veeam, Rubrik, Datto and Azure Backup, reviewing recovery targets against what the technology could genuinely deliver.

Service delivery management Defined service catalogues and agreements, built the reporting behind them, and coached technical teams on the data that made performance provable.

Microsoft 365 and Azure Identity, endpoint management, conditional access, email authentication and compliance tooling across a range of client tenants.

Sectors Manufacturing, multi-site retail, financial services, healthcare and construction.

A project worth describing

A retail chain with 140 shops had every till, back-office machine and camera sharing one flat network at each site. I led the project to separate them, writing the deployment handbook the field engineers worked from, coordinating the third-party team, and acting as the escalation point when something didn't go to plan. Each mark below is one shop.

140Sites migrated

139First time, no rework

1Rolled back and redone

99.3%Delivered clean

Qualifications

Security

CompTIA CySA+
CompTIA Security+
Microsoft SC-900, Security, Compliance and Identity

Infrastructure & cloud

Microsoft AZ-104, Azure Administrator Associate
Microsoft AZ-900, Azure Fundamentals
CompTIA Network+
Cisco CCNA Routing & Switching

Delivery & governance

ITIL Foundation in IT Service Management
PMI Certified Associate in Project Management
BSc Computer Systems Networking & Telecommunications

How I work

Scope and fee agreed before anything starts You'll know what the work covers and what it costs before I begin, and if the scope needs to change we'll talk about it rather than it appearing on an invoice.
You keep the documentation Whatever I produce is written so your own team or provider can pick it up and work from it. I'd rather not be a single point of failure in someone else's business.
I'll tell you when the answer is no If something isn't worth doing, if your existing provider should be handling it, or if you're already in reasonable shape, that's what I'll say.
References on request Happy to put you in touch with people I've worked with directly so you can ask them rather than take my word for it.

Vision

Help people and businesses solve problems through the efficient use of knowledge.
Help people and businesses make informed decisions.

Start with a conversation, not a proposal.

Tell me what's prompting the question, whether that's a renewal, a customer requirement, an incident, a message you're not sure about or a project deadline, and I'll come back with what I think it needs and what it would cost.

Book a session → WhatsApp → Email me →

Remote wherever you are, on site where it's needed