Practitioners’ high-tech Christmas wish list
In an ideal world smart technology will take away the grunt work and leave the important human touch to the practitioners. A tech titan hears the call.
A TOP property lawyer and real estate professional recently had the opportunity to tell an Australian tech titan face-to-face exactly what they need in practice software.
And near the top of their wish list, was foolproof cyber security.
It was discussed in the Australian Conveyancer’s latest Settlement Day podcast.
Guests were ATI Global founder Christian Beck, real estate guru John McGrath and top property lawyer and conveyancer Jared Zak, of Dott & Crossitt.
“The thing that keeps us awake at night are cyber scams, and they’re perpetrated almost entirely through email,” said Zak.
“What we tell our clients from the start, do not rely on any email particularly if it’s asking for a transfer of funds. You need to call up and do that verbally.”
Dott & Crossitt use a “client dashboard” to downgrade the risk, with two-factor ID.
“But that’s not going to mitigate the risk completely,” Zak added. “These fraudsters are very wily.”
Beck, whose company triSearch supplies the practice management software used by thousands of conveyancers, agrees on the need.
“There’s definitely been a lot of scams in relation to email and money being transferred,” he said.
The technology to defeat scammers exists; the challenge is to get clients to adopt it.
“It’s just getting people to make the change,” says Beck. “The whole idea, rather than sending an email, you have something where they log in.
“And they’re responding to that, not the email. Because the whole problem with email is it’s very easy to replicate by a fraudster.”
Beck says secure communication in property transaction is firmly on his agenda, but it must be both strong and user-friendly.
“We’d love to talk to you later about exactly what you want,” he told his fellow panellists.
View the full podcast here:
