Strata IT Support & Cyber Security NSW

Strata firms fail on IT in a small number of predictable ways, and none
of them are about hardware.

Records that cannot be produced.
An owner or a tribunal asks for correspondence from four years ago. It was in a mailbox belonging to a manager who left in 2023.
Scheme handovers that lose history.
A scheme moves between managers internally and the email trail does not move with it.
Correspondence volume that outpaces the mailbox.
Owners, committees, contractors and insurers all arrive in the same inbox with no structure and no delegation.
Personal data with no certification behind it.
Strata firms hold identity documents, bank details and levy histories for thousands of lot owners, and are increasingly asked to prove how those are protected.
Nobody accountable for the strata platform.
The practice management vendor blames the network, the IT provider blames the application, and the upgrade never happens.

See how a professional managed service partner (MSP) should govern your cloud, not just host it:

Section 180 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) requires an owners corporation to retain specified scheme records for seven years.
In practice the strata manager holds and produces those records on the owners corporation's behalf, which makes retention an IT problem rather than an administrative one.

Strata record obligations and the systems that satisfy them.
Obligation	Where it breaks down	What we put in place
Seven-year retention of scheme records	Records sit in individual mailboxes and leave with the staff member	Immutable email archiving with a seven-year retention policy
Electronic record keeping	No single searchable store; records spread across mail, files and the strata platform	A searchable electronic archive of all correspondence
Producing records on request	Manual mailbox searches take days and miss deleted items	Tamper-proof archive with evidentiary search and export
Continuity through staff change	Mailboxes deleted or reassigned when a manager leaves	Archive independent of the mailbox and the licence
Protecting owner personal information	No certified control set; no evidence to give clients or insurers	SMB1001 cyber certification via SecureStart
Managing correspondence volume	Shared mailboxes with no ownership, delegation or audit trail	Microsoft 365 with structured shared mailboxes and Teams

Clear IT Governance for Strata Managers

Day‑to‑day, ‘different’ feels like everyone knowing who is responsible for what. Decisions about systems, security and IT spend follow a clear governance model, not ad hoc requests, so risk and cost are controlled.

The entire Strata team all work from the same, documented playbook, with roles, responsibilities and approval paths clearly set out.

Transparent Reporting for Partners

'Different’ also means partners see what is happening, not just hear about problems. Regular, plain‑English reporting shows risk, performance and spend in a way that supports informed decisions.

Instead of digging through tickets or asking for updates, partners receive clear summaries of key metrics, issues and progress, so they can focus on direction rather than chasing detail.

Support Model for Decentralised Teams

For decentralised teams, the support model is designed around how your people actually work. Whether they are in the office, at court, on‑site or at home, they access help in the same consistent way.

Flexible work is supported, not resisted. Standardised processes, remote support and secure access mean staff can move between locations without losing productivity or compromising security.

Strata groups grow by acquiring rent rolls and management portfolios, and each acquisition arrives with its own systems, contracts and habits. Our vCIO engagement gives your directors a single technology roadmap across every office: what gets standardised, what gets retired, what it costs, and in what order.

A 12 to 36 month technology roadmap tied to your growth plan
Consolidation planning for acquired portfolios and offices
Board-ready reporting on IT spend, risk and compliance status
One accountable party across platform, network and security vendors

Email. The necessary evil in strata management!

It carries decisions, approvals, instructions and sensitive correspondence - but when it is scattered across personal inboxes, deleted, or lost when staff move on, it can quickly become a compliance, dispute and service-delivery risk.

Microsolve Email Archive captures and securely retains every email in a searchable, immutable central archive. Your team can find the full history of a scheme when needed, protect critical evidence, and keep records available regardless of who sent, received or deleted the original message.

Turn Chaos into Structure with Teams and SharePoint

Strata managers juggle dozens of schemes, but unstructured Teams creates lost files, compliance risks, and daily frustration. Microsolve delivers custom governance – hub-and-spoke structure, scheme channels, SharePoint retention – turning Teams into your scalable command centre.

Stop Losing Emails with Staff Turnover

When strata team members leave or schemes get reassigned, critical email history often vanishes with their personal inbox. Immutable email archiving keeps every message searchable and scheme-attributable, regardless of who handles it.

See how to protect your strata emails from staff turnover losses

Protection from Strata Disputes and Defamation

Emails can make or break NCAT cases. Don't let deletions or "lost" messages undermine your position. Immutable archiving ensures every strata email is tamper-proof and automatically available.

Learn more about immutable archiving for Disputes & Defammation

Can strata managers meet NSW’s new electronic record‑keeping rules without drowning?

Yes! An immutable email archiving captures every message before it reaches any mailbox, automatically encrypting, indexing, and storing it in an unchangeable cloud archive so correspondence is retained for the required seven years, easily searchable by scheme, and defensible in audits—even when staff leave or emails are deleted locally.

Explore an Email Archive Solution designed for Strata

How do I manage email sent to personal Inboxes?

A company wide email archive captures all messages and permanently stores them

Every email captured and stored

Increasingly, yes - and the pressure is coming from clients and insurers rather than regulators. Strata firms have been directly targeted: in April 2026 a NSW strata management firm was allegedly breached by a ransomware group claiming to hold 441GB of firm data, including identity documents. Committees now ask how their owners' data is protected, and "we take security seriously" is no longer an answer. See SMB1001 for strata and protecting strata data from ransomware.

SMB1001 gives you a certification you can show them, at a cost that suits a strata business rather than an enterprise. Our SecureStart program takes you to Gold over 36 months, with Bronze and Silver certified along the way.

We understand the specific challenges of positioning cyber resilience in Strata management

Do I need a certified approach to Cyber Security?

Using a practical framework ensures that your cyber efforts are structured and effective.

Discover the importance of Cyber Certification

Protecting the Privacy of Stakeholders

Practical measures for managing privacy compliance

Explore privacy protection for Strata managers

Lessons from recent attacks on Strata managers

Dive deep into how recent attacks were launched and the protection strategies needed to protect your key digital assets

Understand the Ransomware dangers

How much protection do I need?

SMB1001 is a tiered program allowing strata management firms to progressively deploy improved cyber controls in a planned and pragmatic manner - no big bang, no massive expense.

See how SMB1001 tiers simplify your cyber journey

Is Cyber a competitive advantage

SMB1001 certification provides a recognised, verifiable way to demonstrate that your firm takes security seriously, without needing to explain technical details in every proposal

Discover the Competitve advantages of SMB1001

Most strata firms already pay for Microsoft 365, but few have it set up around how schemes are actually run. Teams channels multiply, scheme documents end up in personal OneDrive folders, and retention is left at the default settings. Since 11 June 2024, NSW strata records have to be kept electronically, so how Microsoft 365 stores and retains them is now a compliance question.

Microsoft 365 for strata gives every scheme a consistent home in Teams and SharePoint, protects inboxes against phishing and invoice fraud, and applies seven-year retention automatically. It is built on our Microsoft 365 modern workplace services.

Inboxes overflowing with owner and contractor email

Structured shared mailboxes, rules and scheme-visible communication in Microsoft 365 cut inbox overload and keep every thread available to the whole portfolio team, including during leave and handovers.

Get on top of communication volume

Keeping scheme records for seven years without a filing room

SharePoint scheme sites with metadata, version history, audit trails and automatic seven-year retention labels, hosted in Australia and searchable by scheme.

Set up SharePoint for scheme records

Meeting NSW mandatory electronic record-keeping

Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive and retention policies, set up to work alongside your strata management software, capture correspondence and documents electronically and keep them for the required seven years.

Meet the record-keeping rules

Phishing and invoice fraud aimed at your inboxes

Defender for Office 365, multi-factor authentication, conditional access and data loss prevention, configured and managed for strata firms, protect owner data, scheme financials and contracts.

Strengthen your email security

Teams cluttered with channels nobody can find

A governed Teams design with consistent channel patterns, controlled team creation, scheme-based files and role-based access, so managers find scheme information quickly and sensitive owner data stays protected.

Structure Teams around your schemes

If your strata management or accounting software still runs on a server in the office, that one machine holds levies, owner records and years of correspondence. When it fails, or ransomware reaches it, scheme administration stops until it is restored.

AWS cloud hosting for strata moves those systems into Australian data centres in planned stages, with immutable backups and tested recovery. If your software is already a cloud service, we will tell you there is nothing to move. See our wider AWS solutions.

Should your strata company move to the cloud?

Electronic record-keeping, growing data volumes, remote committees and disaster recovery are pushing firms off on-site servers. We assess, plan and migrate in phases so the move fits how your firm works.

Weigh up a move to the cloud

Hosting seven years of electronic records for every scheme

Encrypted, Australian-hosted AWS storage with role-based access, redundancy and room to grow keeps every scheme's records secure, retrievable and retained for the full seven years.

Host scheme records securely

Could ransomware take your firm offline?

Immutable, versioned backups, patched and hardened servers, segmentation and rapid recovery on AWS, layered with SMB1001 controls and email security, limit the damage and shorten the time to recover.

Assess your ransomware resilience

Worried a migration will stall scheme administration?

Dependency mapping, parallel running and staged cutovers by portfolio or function move your strata platform to AWS while levies, correspondence and owner portals keep working.

See the phased migration approach

What are your on-site servers really costing you?

We cost your hardware, replacement cycles, power, backup and IT time, then model predictable AWS hosting, so budget moves from maintaining servers to security and growth.

Compare server and cloud costs

In many strata firms, a principal or office manager makes IT decisions between portfolio meetings, and the support provider fixes problems as they come up. Nobody owns the roadmap, the budget, or the question of whether your systems will keep up with the next round of NSW strata reforms.

A strata vCIO fills that gap with part-time senior technology leadership: a roadmap, an annual IT budget and plain-language reporting to your directors. Read what a strata vCIO engagement looks like, or see vCIO pricing.

IT support that fixes things but never plans ahead

Break-fix support keeps systems running. A vCIO adds the roadmap, budget forecasting, risk reporting and vendor management that line technology up with your growth and compliance obligations.

Move beyond break-fix IT

Is your firm ready for NSW's digital-first strata reforms?

A vCIO assesses your systems against electronic records, secure online access and e-voting requirements, then sets a prioritised, budgeted roadmap so compliance is planned work rather than a last-minute scramble.

Plan for the strata reforms

Too many platforms and too much double entry

We review your strata, accounting, portal and communication tools, map how data moves between them, and build the business case and migration plan to consolidate without disrupting scheme administration.

Start consolidating your software

Every new office or portfolio set up a different way

A repeatable framework for devices, Microsoft 365, security baselines and connectivity, so each new office, team or acquired portfolio is onboarded quickly and supported the same way as the rest.

Scale IT with your portfolio

What does a vCIO actually do for a strata company?

Quarterly or monthly reviews sized to your portfolio, delivering a technology roadmap, an annual IT budget, a security review, vendor coordination and reporting you can take to principals and owners.

See what an engagement includes

Device Support

Support of your IT infrastructure to agreed Service Levels - network, servers, desktops, laptops, thin clients and mobile devices.

Coverage options from 8x5 to 24x7.

Support Options

Cloud Migration, Hosting & Support

Mitigate the risk posed by onsite servers through migration to the leading cloud providers without the need to upskill your IT team or increase headcount.

Cloud Service Advantages

Cyber Security & Consulting

Integrate pragmatic, standards based Cyber Security practices across your Organisation using the SMB1001 and Essential Eight programs and Microsolve advisory services.

Cyber Security is my #1 Worry

Application Integration

Activate seamless data flow and communication between disparate care systems, electronic health records, and care management platforms, ensuring efficient delivery of resident care.

Explore Integration

Site Onboarding

Rapidly deploy and operationalise new IT infrastructure, applications, and systems with minimal disruption to resident care, providing structured implementation processes, staff training, and technical support.

Successful Migrations

Infrastructure Design & Build

Deliver robust, scalable, and secure IT foundations tailored to Aged Care environments, encompassing network architecture, server systems, security frameworks, and compliance-ready infrastructure.

Infrastructure Design

Each service is built around strata record-keeping, scheme administration and owner privacy.

Where to start, by the problem you are solving

If your question is	Start here
Owners, committees and contractors all land in the same inbox — how do we give the team structure?	Microsoft 365 for strata management companies
Can we produce seven years of scheme correspondence when an owner or a tribunal asks?	Email archiving for strata managers
How do we show committees and insurers that owner data is actually protected?	SMB1001 certification for strata
When the platform vendor and the IT provider both blame each other, who owns the roadmap?	vCIO services for strata management companies
Can we keep working through a server failure, and prove scheme records stay in Australia?	AWS cloud hosting for strata managers

How long must strata records be kept in NSW?

Section 180 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 requires an owners corporation to retain specified scheme records for seven years.

Because the strata manager holds and produces those records, the retention obligation lands on the manager's systems in practice.

See how email archiving and Microsoft 365 keep those records electronically while meeting the seven-year requirement

Is email archiving the same as an email backup?

No. A backup is designed to restore a mailbox after a failure and is usually kept for 30 to 90 days. An immutable archive keeps a tamper-proof, searchable copy of every message for the full retention period, independent of the mailbox, the user licence and the staff member.

What happens to strata email records when a manager leaves?

Without an archive, deleting or reassigning the mailbox takes the record with it.

With an archive, the correspondence stays searchable regardless of who held the mailbox or which scheme has since been reassigned.

More on staff turnover and strata email records.

Do strata managers need SMB1001 certification?

It is not a legal requirement - but it is increasingly a commercial one: committees, insurers and larger clients ask strata firms to evidence their cyber controls, and SMB1001 provides a recognised Australian certification proportionate to the size of a strata business.

SMB1001 levels, cost and timeline.

Which strata management platforms do you support?

Any platform!

We take responsibility for the environment it runs in - be that on-premise or cloud.

Can you support a strata firm with several offices

Yes. Multi-office and post-acquisition consolidation is the most common
reason strata groups engage us - standardising systems across offices that
arrived with different platforms, contracts and support arrangements.

IT Support and Cyber Security for Strata Managers in NSW

What goes wrong with IT in a strata management firm

How long do strata managers need to keep records in NSW?

Different, Not Just Better

Clear IT Governance for Strata Managers

Transparent Reporting for Partners

Support Model for Decentralised Teams

If it captures, moves, stores or processes data relied upon for delivering value to your clients we're all over it!

Strategic IT governance for multi-office strata firms

Solving the Strata Email Problem