Most business owners who invest in cyber security believe it’s working. They’ve bought the protection, run the training, had a close call or two and tightened things up since. By most measures, that counts as “secure.”
Neo Settlements believed the same thing. Then they decided belief wasn’t good enough and went looking for proof instead.
A Business That Couldn’t Afford To Guess
Neo Settlements operates in one of the highest-trust, highest-financial-risk corners of Australian business: property settlements. Every transaction moves sensitive personal information and significant sums of money through their systems. Getting cyber security wrong is more than an inconvenience. It’s the kind of mistake that destroys reputation.
“Rather than just assuming we were secure, we wanted to demonstrate that we actually were,” says Catharine Holloway of Neo Settlements.
So instead of taking their existing protections on faith, Neo Settlements chose to benchmark their cyber maturity against SMB1001, the Australian cyber security standard built specifically for small and medium businesses.
Neo Settlements later announced the result publicly: the first settlement agent in Australia to earn CyberCert SMB1001 Gold certification.
What The Review Actually Measured
An SMB1001 assessment isn’t a quick form to fill out and forget. It examines organisational controls, business processes, staff practices and technical systems against an independent benchmark, then scores the gap between where a business thinks it stands and where it actually stands.
For Neo Settlements, the certification itself was never the point. The badge matters less than what produced it: an independent view of their cyber maturity, a clear list of where to improve, and confirmation that their existing investments were already pointed in the right direction. There’s a commercial upside too. Clients and referral partners now have an independently verified reason to trust Neo Settlements with their most sensitive information.
The biggest surprise for the team wasn’t technical. It was how much of their cyber maturity came down to organisational controls, business processes and plain human habits rather than software. Fixing those gaps didn’t just close a security risk. In several cases, it made existing processes faster.
From Uncertainty To Clarity
What started as a conversation about cyber security with activIT systems turned into a closer look at how information actually moved through the business: where it was stored, who could reach it, and how risk was managed day to day.
“Cyber security has always been important to us because of the trust our clients place in us and the significant sums involved in property settlements,” Holloway says. “SMB1001 gave us a clear understanding of where we stood, confirmed what we were already doing well, and highlighted opportunities to improve.”
The Bottom Line
Neo Settlements now knows, rather than assumes, that its cyber security is being actively managed to a recognised industry standard. They can show that commitment to every client who asks, and they know exactly what “good” looks like for a business their size.
That’s the real difference between awareness and action. Awareness says cyber security matters. Action says: here’s where we stand today, here’s what we’re prioritising and here’s what we’re doing about it.
Ready To Take Action?
Neo Settlements’ certification started with a single conversation about where they actually stood. If you’ve invested in cyber security but have never had it independently checked, the same conversation is available to you.
Book a free SMB1001 discussion and no obligation gap assessment with activIT systems: a 45-minute session with no preparation required, built to show you where you stand today and what to prioritise next.
- Free 45-minute session with no obligation
- No preparation required
- A clear picture of your current cyber security position
- Practical next steps, specific to your business
Call 1300 228 480 or fill in the form on our contact page to get started.
Want to understand the SMB1001 framework in more depth? Read more on our SMB1001 page. For detail on the standard itself, visit Dynamic Standards International.
