FourWinds Protect or a managed IT provider: which do you need?

They do different jobs. A managed IT provider looks after your devices and supports your staff every month. Protect closes the compliance gaps an insurer or customer asks about, once, and proves it with a second scan and an evidence pack. If you have an IT provider, the programme adds the proof. If you have none, your devices still need one.

By Oscar CobbeCurrent as at 26 October 20265 minute read4 sources

What each costs

As published on 22 October 2026.

Option	Published price	How it is paid
Managed IT, iPing's figure for Dublin	€350 to €900 a month for 10 to 20 staff	Monthly
Managed IT, Panoptic's calculator	€1,080 to €1,560 a month for 10 people and 15 devices, Microsoft 365 licences included	Monthly, with a one-off onboarding fee
FourWinds, Protect	€2,950 up to 10 staff, €4,950 for 11 to 25, €7,500 for 26 to 50	Once, fixed in writing before the work starts
FourWinds, Support	€450 a month	Monthly, after a Build or Protect

Which job is whose

The managed IT column is what iPing and Panoptic list on the pages cited below. A particular contract may include more, and it is the contract that says.

The job	Managed IT, as published	Protect
Support your staff can call on	Listed by both	No
Software updates and patching on every device	Listed by iPing; Panoptic lists devices looked after	No
Antivirus or endpoint security tools	Listed by iPing; Panoptic lists all its security in the fee	No
Microsoft 365 licences	Inside Panoptic's fee	No
Two-step sign-in on every staff account	Listed on Panoptic's security page; not in iPing's list	Yes
Backups, with a test restore done and dated	Panoptic's security page lists a restore it tests; not in iPing's list	Yes
An incident plan, practised once with the people it names	Not in the published lists	Yes
SPF and DMARC set to enforce	Not in the published lists	Yes
Cookie consent and a privacy notice that names every tracker	Not in the published lists	Yes
A second scan, a CyFun Basic score and an evidence pack for insurers	Panoptic offers written evidence of its controls for insurers; neither names a second scan from outside or a score	Yes

Support is not managed IT

Support, at €450 a month, is our monthly product, and it looks after different things: up to five of your systems (the website, forms, bookings, payments, the automations and the connections between them), the website's updates, and one report a month on enquiries, bookings, revenue and cost per booking. After Protect, it scans your website and email again every week and reopens a fix that slips. It has no help desk for staff and does not manage laptops or phones.

OBF Insurance Group's list of what underwriters expect includes regular patching and managed endpoint detection and response on every laptop and desktop. If nobody does that for you today, it is a job for an IT provider. Support sits beside that provider, and Protect gives both of you the same evidence to work from.

If you already have an IT provider

Ask them for the items in the lower half of the table, in writing, with dates. If they have done them and can show it, your insurer's questionnaire is already answerable. If they cannot show it, that is the gap Protect closes.

Our guide on what it costs to meet cyber insurance requirements prices the same jobs across other kinds of provider.

Sources

Free, and no account needed

See what your setup shows from outside, free

The free compliance check reads your website and email settings from outside and asks a few questions about the business. Send the result to your IT provider: it shows which of the lower rows of the table are already done.

Run the free check

The insurer basics, done and proven, beside your IT provider

Protect sets up two-step sign-in, a tested restore, a practised incident plan and email protection, then proves them with a second scan, a CyFun Basic score and an evidence pack. It works beside your IT provider. From €2,950 up to 10 staff, fixed before we start.

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Who wrote this

Oscar Cobbe · Founder, FourWinds Digital

Writes and maintains the legal explainers on this site, and does the compliance work behind them. Every date and article number here is checked against the legislation itself before it is published, and each article shows the date it was last checked.

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