Surry Hills runs on design studios, agencies, production companies, software teams and hospitality — and on converted terraces and warehouses that were never built with a comms room in mind. The technology problems here are about large files, mixed Mac and Windows fleets, people who come and go on projects, and getting real bandwidth into a heritage building.
Kinsoft provides managed IT support, cybersecurity and cloud services to businesses across Surry Hills, Darlinghurst, Redfern, Chippendale and the southern edge of the Sydney CBD.
What tends to be different about a Surry Hills office
Macs are not an afterthought. In a design or production team the Mac fleet is often the majority. That changes how you do device management, patching and disk encryption, and it means a provider whose tooling is Windows-only will quietly leave half your machines unmanaged.
Project files are enormous. Video, RAW photography, 3D and large InDesign packages punish a setup designed for spreadsheets. The questions worth asking are where the working files live, whether people are editing over the network or copying locally, and whether the archive is actually backed up or just sitting on a shelf of external drives.
Heritage buildings fight you on cabling and bandwidth. Terrace conversions and old warehouses often have one incoming service, awkward risers and no sensible cable path. It is usually solvable, but it needs looking at rather than assuming. Symmetric upload matters far more here than in a typical office, because these teams push files out as much as they pull them in. See business internet options.
Freelancers and contractors need access, then need it removed. Project-based staffing is normal here and offboarding is where it goes wrong — accounts left active for months, shared logins nobody rotates, files still reachable. Access that is granted per project and expires is worth setting up once.
Managed IT support
Unlimited helpdesk, monitoring, patching, backup verification and quarterly reviews for a predictable monthly fee — typically $80–$200 per user per month, covering Mac and Windows. See managed IT support.
Cybersecurity for agencies and studios
Agencies hold client material under NDA, and increasingly clients ask what you do to protect it before they will sign. Being able to answer that properly is a commercial advantage, not just an IT chore.
We cover endpoint detection and response, email filtering, MFA, phishing simulation and Essential Eight alignment — see cybersecurity, or measure where you are now with the free security assessment.
Two risks are unusually high in this sector. The first is invoice fraud: agencies bill large amounts irregularly, which is exactly the pattern criminals look for when they intercept a payment. The second is the shared-account habit — one login for a social tool or asset library, the password passed around, and no way to revoke it when someone leaves.
Backup for large media archives
Standard backup pricing assumes documents, not terabytes of footage. Getting this right means deciding what genuinely needs to be recoverable, what can be archived more cheaply, and testing that a restore actually works before you need it. See cloud backup.
Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or both
Plenty of Surry Hills businesses run Google Workspace for mail and Microsoft 365 for documents, or inherited a mix. Either is workable; what causes trouble is nobody owning the security settings in whichever one you use. We manage Microsoft 365 and will tell you honestly if switching is not worth the disruption.
Get IT support in Surry Hills
Call 02 9064 2663 or contact us online for a free IT health check. We cover Surry Hills, Darlinghurst, Redfern, Chippendale, Waterloo and the southern CBD.
Do you support Macs as well as Windows?
Yes, as first-class devices rather than exceptions — management, patching, encryption and backup across both. If your team is mostly Mac, say so when you call and we will scope it that way.
Can you improve internet speed in an old terrace or warehouse?
Often, yes. It depends what is available at the street and what the building allows internally. Upload speed is usually the constraint that matters for a studio, and it is worth checking properly rather than assuming the current service is the only option.
How do you handle freelancers who only work on one project?
Accounts are created with an end date and access scoped to that project, so removal is automatic rather than something someone has to remember. If you currently have shared logins, replacing those is the first step.
Can you help us answer a client’s security questionnaire?
Yes. Larger clients increasingly require this before awarding work, and the questions are usually about MFA, backups, access control and incident response — all things we can both implement and document for you.