Your clients trust you with their most sensitive financial affairs.
AFSL holders, wealth managers, insurance brokers, and mortgage brokers operate under some of the strictest data and compliance obligations in Australia. APRA CPS 234, ASIC regulatory guides, the Privacy Act, and the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme all impose specific IT obligations — and regulators are increasingly asking for evidence of controls, not just declarations. Your technology infrastructure needs to hold up to regulatory scrutiny without interrupting the work your clients pay you for.
IT challenges in financial services firms
APRA CPS 234 and information security obligations
APRA CPS 234 requires APRA-regulated entities — including RSE licensees, ADIs, and insurers — to maintain an information security capability commensurate with the size and extent of threats to their information assets. Third-party service providers (including managed IT providers) must also meet CPS 234 obligations. Many smaller APRA-regulated firms are unaware that their IT provider's security posture is part of their own compliance obligation.
ASIC breach reporting and record-keeping
ASIC's Regulatory Guide 255 requires AFS licensees to maintain adequate records of advice and client interactions — with specific obligations around email and document retention. The ASIC reportable situations regime (RG 78) requires prompt breach reporting, which is only possible if your IT systems maintain comprehensive audit logs. Most smaller licensees do not have audit logging configured in their Microsoft 365 environment.
Cyber insurance and Essential Eight evidence
Professional indemnity and cyber insurance policies for financial services firms increasingly require evidence of Essential Eight Maturity Level 2 at renewal — not self-declared, but evidenced through a third-party assessment. AFSL holders that cannot demonstrate MFA, patching compliance, and application control face premium increases or coverage exclusions. The gap between what insurers expect and what most small licensees have in place is significant.
Business email compromise targeting financial firms
Financial services firms are among the highest-value targets for BEC in Australia. Attackers who compromise an adviser's or broker's email account gain access to client bank account details, superannuation rollover instructions, and financial transaction authorities. A single BEC event at a financial services firm can result in client losses that trigger both PI insurance claims and ASIC breach notifications simultaneously.
Cloud and data sovereignty
APRA-regulated entities must maintain visibility and control over where data is stored and processed. Many financial services firms are unaware that default Microsoft 365 configurations do not guarantee Australian data residency — tenant configuration must be deliberately set to Australian datacentres. Third-party SaaS applications used by financial services firms (CRMs, financial planning software) may also store data offshore by default.
Identity and access for adviser and broker networks
Financial services firms with authorised representatives, referral partners, and external advisers face a particular identity challenge — external parties need access to specific systems without being given broad internal access. Managing external identities, their permissions, and their offboarding is complex without a proper identity platform. Most small licensees manage this through shared logins or uncontrolled personal accounts.
What success looks like
When IT is done right for a financial services firm, your compliance obligations are met without consuming your team's time, your client data is protected without friction, and your technology supports growth rather than constraining it.
- APRA and ASIC compliance evidence available on demand
- Client data protected and access controlled
- Essential Eight Maturity Level 2 demonstrated at insurance renewal
- BEC and ransomware protections in place across all devices
- Data residency confirmed in Australian Microsoft datacentres
- External adviser and partner access managed cleanly
A simple plan to get there
Understand
We assess your Microsoft 365 environment, third-party integrations, and security posture against APRA CPS 234, ASIC obligations, and Essential Eight — and produce a plain-language compliance gap report.
Fix
We resolve the underlying problems — identity, access control, audit logging, backup, and data residency configuration — and establish a secure, compliant foundation.
Improve
We manage, monitor, and continuously improve your technology environment on a fixed monthly fee — with a named account manager, unlimited helpdesk, and quarterly compliance reporting.
Microsoft 365 compliance for financial services
Microsoft Purview enforces financial records retention automatically — the financial services sector requires 7-year record retention, and Purview retention policies apply this across Exchange Online, SharePoint, and Teams without manual intervention. Financial services firms are high-value targets for business email compromise and ransomware, so Microsoft Defender for Business provides AI-driven threat detection across identity, endpoint, and email. APRA CPS 234 requires strong identity controls, which Entra ID Conditional Access enforces through MFA and device compliance before any client data is reached. Essential Eight Maturity Level 2 is the baseline for financial services firms in ASIC and government supply chain contexts, and we align every environment to that maturity level. Review your Essential Eight baseline and check your cyber insurance controls.
Microsoft Purview — records retention and eDiscovery
Financial records retention obligations under ASIC RG 255 require AFS licensees to retain records of advice for 7 years. Microsoft Purview retention policies enforce this automatically across Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive — with eDiscovery capability for regulatory investigations and litigation hold for ASIC audit responses.
- Automated 7-year retention policies for advice records
- eDiscovery for regulatory investigations
- Litigation hold for ASIC audit responses
- Information protection labels for client financial data
Microsoft Defender — threat protection and BEC prevention
Enterprise-grade threat protection across all endpoints, email, and cloud apps — with specific anti-BEC capabilities including impersonation protection, suspicious forwarding rule detection, and financial transaction email flagging.
- Endpoint detection and response
- Anti-phishing and BEC impersonation protection
- Suspicious email forwarding rule alerts
- Defender for Cloud Apps for SaaS visibility
Microsoft Entra — identity and external access
Centralised identity management with Conditional Access, MFA, and B2B guest access for authorised representatives and referral partners — ensuring external parties have controlled, auditable access to only the systems they need.
- Conditional Access policies for financial planning software
- Multi-factor authentication for all staff and representatives
- B2B guest access for authorised representatives
- Privileged Identity Management for admin accounts
Microsoft Intune — device management and compliance
Managed device compliance for all firm-owned and BYOD devices — ensuring staff and authorised representatives accessing client data meet the firm's security baseline, with remote wipe capability for lost or stolen devices.
- Device compliance policies
- Remote wipe for lost or stolen devices
- Application deployment and patching
- BYOD separation of personal and firm data
Azure Backup — data protection and sovereignty
Immutable, geo-redundant backup of all Microsoft 365 data hosted exclusively in Microsoft's Australian datacentres — satisfying APRA data sovereignty requirements and providing a tested recovery plan for ransomware events.
- Microsoft 365 backup with Australian data residency
- Immutable backup storage — ransomware resilient
- Recovery time objective (RTO) tested and documented
- Backup reporting for APRA CPS 234 evidence
Fractional CIO for financial services firms
Financial services firms from 10–100 staff rarely have a dedicated IT Director. Mycelium 365's Fractional CIO service provides named senior technology leadership — quarterly technology roadmap reviews, vendor management (cloud, cyber, telephony), board-level IT reporting, and cyber incident response planning — for a fixed monthly retainer. Explore Fractional CIO services and our technology roadmap engagements, or review our managed Security Operations Centre and pricing packages starting from $95/user/month.
Real-world use cases for financial services firms
AFSL holder — APRA CPS 234 gap assessment and remediation
A boutique wealth management firm in Sydney with an Australian Financial Services Licence needed to demonstrate APRA CPS 234 compliance as part of a PE due diligence process. Their existing IT environment had no audit logging, no MFA enforcement, and Microsoft 365 data stored in US datacentres by default. Mycelium 365 conducted a CPS 234 gap assessment, migrated the tenant to Australian datacentres, deployed Conditional Access with MFA, enabled Microsoft Purview audit logging, and produced a compliance evidence pack within 6 weeks.
Insurance broker — Essential Eight ML2, cyber insurance renewal
A 15-staff Melbourne insurance broker faced a 40% premium increase at cyber insurance renewal due to inability to evidence Essential Eight controls. Mycelium 365 deployed Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Defender, Intune device compliance, and application control policies — achieving Essential Eight Maturity Level 2 within 8 weeks. The broker renewed at a lower premium with broader coverage and now has an automated evidence pack generated quarterly from Microsoft Secure Score.
Mortgage aggregator — BEC incident response and hardening
A mortgage aggregator with 22 brokers experienced a BEC attack where an attacker who had compromised a broker's email account sent fraudulent settlement instructions to a conveyancer, resulting in a $180,000 misdirected payment. Mycelium 365 deployed Defender for Office 365 with financial transaction keyword alerting, Conditional Access blocking legacy authentication, and Entra ID suspicious forwarding rule detection. An incident response plan was documented and tested with the aggregator's PI insurer.
Why financial services firms choose Mycelium 365
- Microsoft Solutions Partner — verified at partner.microsoft.com — independently assessed technical capability, not self-declared
- Fixed-price, month-to-month — from $95/user/month, no lock-in contracts, written proposals before any work begins
- Australian data residency — all Microsoft 365 data hosted in Microsoft's Sydney and Melbourne datacentres — satisfies APRA data sovereignty and Privacy Act APP 8 requirements