Speaking in a recent panel discussion, BGL managing director Ron Lesh explained that firms need to adopt a multifaceted approach when addressing cyber security, which will entail a wide range of different things.

One of the starting points, said Mr Lesh, is to ensure the business is running the most up-to-date versions of software and avoid using external Wi-Fi networks.

“There are weak points in the system, and public Wi-Fi networks are probably the weakest,” warned Mr Lesh.

“It’s also a matter of having apps that are well designed and secure and keeping an eye on which ones get hacked and making sure you get updated.”

Updating passwords regularly is also an important part of protecting against cyber attacks, he added.

“Use statements as passwords, not names, places and dates of birth. [You should also use] two-factor authentication,” he recommended.

Any firms that don’t already have cyber insurance should strongly consider getting it, he said.

“If you don’t have it, you should, and you should have cyber and professional indemnity insurance together because having them separate could be a problem if there is a claim,” he warned.

Mr Lesh said it is also vital that staff receive training on cyber security.

“If you’re not training your staff, get online and sign up for someone to come and train your staff because they’re your weakest link – them clicking on a link is the weakest list link of your organisation,” he warned.

Speaking at a recent event, BGL managing director Ron Lesh said that while his firm has been doing a lot of work around the use of artificial intelligence over the last four or five years, there is a number of areas with SMSF administration and compliance where it can be further extended.

“All of our transaction posting is AI-based rather than rules-based and has been for a while, and there’s a review function that will tell you whether transactions have been posted to the right place using AI,” said Mr Lesh, speaking at a panel discussion at the SMSF Association National Conference.

Mr Lesh said there has also been a lot of development with the use of AI for reading documents.

“Not just reading things based on a template but reading any document of any type and a training system to train for any document of any type, we think that’s the future,” he explained.

“We think that may be the solution in the short term for tax distribution statements, but it already is for bank statements. We’ve already got hundreds of thousands of bank statements now being processed that way.”

One of the big areas that both software and audit firms are now looking at, said Mr Lesh, is using AI to help review the compliance of the fund.

“One of the things that I’m very keen to see added to what we’re already doing is a fund review that uses AI to determine whether we think the fund has broken any of the major SIS rules. I think that’s pretty important, and some of the audit firms are already trying to do that,” he stated.

While Mr Lesh said building AI models isn’t an easy process, the expansion of open banking would help development in this area.

“The ability to get a lot more data out of open banking is going to give us the ability to mine that data and really use AI to help clients understand what’s coming through better,” he said.

Mr Lesh also predicts the SMSF sector may even see one click administration five to seven years down the track as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly advanced.