Aged Care & Retirement Living IT Support Adelaide

When residents live here, “back tomorrow” isn't an answer.

Your village isn't an office that empties at five. Your residents are home, their families expect to reach them, and the systems that keep people safe run through the same network as everything else. Otaris keeps your resident-facing systems dependable, your records private and recoverable, and treats every village you run as part of one managed estate.

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In short

What does IT support for a retirement village or aged care operator include?

Otaris supports retirement villages and aged care operators across Adelaide — village Wi-Fi and resident connectivity, the network under emergency call and access systems, village management and operational software, records privacy and recovery, and fast onboarding for a workforce that turns over constantly. Where residential care is provided, we keep the systems behind incident and quality reporting dependable. All under Essential Eight controls. Adelaide-based since 2006.

Nurse call · care records · reporting obligations

Eight questions to ask the IT provider you already have

Aged care is the one sector where an IT failure can become a clinical incident. Nurse call, medication records and care documentation are not back-office systems — they are how you evidence that care was delivered, to a regulator that can ask. An outage you cannot explain and a record you cannot produce are the same problem wearing different clothes.

So don't take our word for anything. These eight questions come straight from the Essential Eight — the standard published by the Australian Signals Directorate, which we didn't write and don't own. Each one can only be answered with a document. Ask them, and notice which answers arrive as a report and which arrive as a reassurance.

01
Patch applications
The care management and medication management systems — which were patched last month, and did the mobile devices on the floor get done?
A real answer looks like: A dated patch report covering fixed and mobile devices separately.
02
Patch operating systems
The nurses' station PCs and the floor devices — how many are on an OS that no longer receives security updates?
A real answer looks like: A device inventory with OS build numbers and end-of-support dates, including floor devices.
03
Multi-factor authentication
Agency and casual staff accounts — how many can sign in with only a password, and how quickly are they removed after a shift ends?
A real answer looks like: A conditional access report covering agency and casual accounts, plus an offboarding log with dates.
04
Restrict admin privileges
Who can change a medication record, and is every change attributed to a named person with a timestamp?
A real answer looks like: The system's audit trail configuration and a sample export showing named attribution and timestamps.
05
Application control
A device on night shift has something installed to get a job done. Does it run?
A real answer looks like: The application control policy, its enforcement mode, and last month's blocked-execution log.
06
Restrict Office macros
The roster and funding assessment workbook runs on macros. What permits that and blocks an emailed one?
A real answer looks like: The macro policy showing default-block, with the roster file's trusted location documented.
07
User application hardening
The browsers used for My Aged Care and the provider portals — what hardening is applied to them?
A real answer looks like: The hardening baseline applied and the date of the last drift check.
08
Regular backups
If care records were encrypted tonight, how would you evidence care delivered tomorrow — and when was that restore last proved?
A real answer looks like: A restore test report with a date, a measured duration, and a signature.

And one more, just for your industry

If the network goes down, does nurse call still work — and have you tested that this year, or are we assuming?

A real answer looks like: A dated test record showing nurse call operating with the network disconnected.

Asked them? Here's what to do with the answers.

A provider doing the work sends a report. One who isn't sends a sentence. If the answers came back vague, that is itself an answer — and you now know which questions to ask again in writing.

To check the same ground against the government standard yourself, the scorecard further down this page takes about two minutes. You keep the result, and there is no form to fill in.

Or ask us — we do this every week.

Book a free consultation

The stakes are different when it's someone's home

In most businesses an outage is an inconvenience measured in lost productivity. In a village it is measured differently. Emergency call, door access and after-hours contact are safety functions, and they ride on infrastructure that most operators inherited rather than designed. A resident does not care which vendor owns the fault.

Connectivity has become part of the offering too. Prospective residents and their families ask about Wi-Fi on the tour, because it is how they will stay in touch and increasingly how they will see a clinician. Patchy coverage across a campus of separate buildings is a genuine competitive problem, not a nice-to-have.

And the information you hold is among the most sensitive there is. Where care is provided, clinical records and the obligations attached to them come with it — and the reporting expected of you is only as good as the records underneath.

“Systems that keep people safe should be the most boring, most reliable thing you own.”

The IT challenges we solve for villages

Resident-facing systems cannot go quiet

Emergency and nurse call, door access, lift phones and after-hours contact are safety systems before they are IT systems. We treat the network they depend on accordingly — monitored, redundant, and never the thing that fails first.

Residents and families expect real connectivity

Village Wi-Fi is now how residents see grandchildren, attend telehealth appointments and stay independent. Patchy coverage is a genuine quality-of-life issue and a recurring complaint at open days. We design coverage that actually works across buildings and grounds.

Records that are sensitive and regulated

Resident information, and clinical records where care is provided, carry privacy obligations that do not soften because you are a small operator. We control who can reach what, log it, and keep it recoverable.

Reporting you must be able to evidence

Where you provide residential care, incident and quality reporting obligations come with it — and evidence is only useful if the underlying records are complete and retrievable. We keep the systems behind that dependable.

High staff turnover and agency shifts

Care rosters change constantly, and agency staff arrive needing access today and losing it next week. Slow onboarding costs care hours; slow offboarding leaves accounts open. We automate both.

Villages are campuses, not offices

Independent living units, communal buildings, a care wing and back office each have different needs on one site. We design and segment the network so resident, staff and building systems stay properly apart.

Getting your villages sorted is simple

Schedule a call

Talk to someone who understands multi-site, resident-facing environments. No sales pitch — a conversation about what worries you most.

We assess every village and build a roadmap

We review connectivity, resident systems, records, backups and access, check you against the Essential Eight, and give you a plan that puts resident-facing safety systems first.

We manage it, so your team can care

Monitoring, security, onboarding and everyday support across every site — so staff spend their time with residents rather than on hold.

Book a free consultation

Everything a village needs, under one partner

Village networks & Wi-Fi

Coverage across units, communal areas and grounds, segmented between residents, staff and building systems.

Resident safety system connectivity

The network and power path under emergency call, access and lift phones, monitored rather than assumed.

Cybersecurity & Essential Eight uplift

MFA, application control, patching and monitoring across every device and every site.

Backups & tested recovery

Resident and operational records backed up and provably recoverable, not just scheduled.

Fast onboarding & offboarding

New and agency staff productive on day one, and access removed the day they finish.

Cloud & server infrastructure

Village management and operational systems hosted where they belong, engineered for uptime.

A local team resident-facing operators trust

Otaris has been looking after Australian businesses since 2006 — that's 20+ years in IT. We're Adelaide-based with Australia-wide coverage, and we explain everything in plain language. You'll never be handed off to an overseas call centre.

Karidis Corporation, an Adelaide operator whose portfolio includes retirement living alongside hotels and commercial property

Client story — Karidis Corporation (13 sites · Adelaide & Melbourne)

Karidis Corporation operates retirement living alongside hotels, commercial property and car parking. After a malware incident in 2023 the environment was rebuilt rather than repaired — Windows 7 endpoints and ageing servers replaced with 50+ Windows 11 devices, AWS virtual desktops and Microsoft 365, secured with MFA and automated backups, and connected by an SD-WAN in place of costly Layer 2 links.

Across 13 sites in two states that now runs at 100% Essential Eight compliance and 99.99% uptime — the same standard applied to resident-facing sites as to head office.

Read the Karidis Corporation case study

20+ years in IT
Retirement living supported
99.99% uptime delivered
Adelaide-based
Essential Eight aligned
One provider for every site

Imagine technology your residents never have to think about

Picture Wi-Fi that reaches the far units, so a resident can take a telehealth appointment without moving rooms. Safety systems on a network that is watched rather than assumed. A new carer productive on their first shift, and their access closed the day they finish. And records you can produce without a search party.

That's the difference between technology residents notice and technology that simply works.

“Strengthening your digital confidence.”

Solutions for your industry

The services we most often deploy for aged care & retirement living.

View all solutions

Frequently asked questions

Villages need IT support that treats resident-facing systems as safety systems rather than office equipment, because residents are home and families expect to reach them. That covers village wifi, the network under emergency call and access, records privacy, and onboarding fast enough to keep up with care rosters. Otaris supports resident-facing operators across Adelaide. Call 1800 456 567 to review your sites.

A safety function stops working, and unlike an office outage it cannot wait until Monday. The protection is monitoring the network path those systems depend on, with redundancy where the risk justifies it, rather than assuming the link is fine because nobody has complained. Otaris monitors resident-facing infrastructure continuously. Call 1800 456 567 to have yours assessed.

By designing for a campus rather than a building. Independent living units, communal areas and grounds each need coverage, and separate structures mean signal cannot simply travel from one central point. Otaris designs village-wide coverage and segments resident, staff and building traffic. Call 1800 456 567 to have your coverage surveyed.

Resident information carries privacy obligations, and where care is provided clinical records carry more again, covering who can access them, how they are stored and how long they are kept. Reporting expected of you is only as reliable as the records underneath it. Otaris controls access, logs it and keeps records recoverable. Call 1800 456 567 for a review.

By automating it, because doing it by hand means either a carer waiting for access on their first shift or an account left open after their last. Care rosters change constantly, so the process has to keep pace without someone remembering each time. Otaris automates onboarding and offboarding. Call 1800 456 567 to set that up.

It can be if resident, staff and building systems share one network, because a problem on the resident side then reaches the systems that run the village. Proper segmentation lets you offer good connectivity without that exposure. Otaris separates the three. Call 1800 456 567 to have your network reviewed.

Their access should close the same day, across every system, without depending on anyone remembering. Offboarding is consistently the half that slips, and in a setting holding resident and clinical records an open account is a real exposure. Otaris closes access as part of a managed process. Call 1800 456 567 to tighten yours.

Yes. Independent living is closer to residential property with strong connectivity expectations, while residential care adds clinical records, incident reporting and the obligations that come with providing care. Many operators run both on one site. Otaris supports either, and both together. Call 1800 456 567 to discuss your mix.

By deciding deliberately where your responsibility ends, and making that clear to residents and families. Most operators support the network and leave personal devices to the resident, with a defined path for help beyond that. Otaris helps set that boundary and supports the infrastructure behind it. Call 1800 456 567 to work out the right line.

Otaris publishes its plans rather than quoting per enquiry. They run from 139 dollars per user per month for staff with a five-user minimum, and village networks, resident wifi and site infrastructure are scoped separately because they depend on the site. Call 1800 456 567 for a figure for your villages.

No name · No email · No follow-up

Check your Essential Eight score

Eight questions, about two minutes. You’ll come out with a plain list of what’s holding up, what isn’t, and what it takes to fix each gap. Some of it you’ll be able to do yourself. Some of it honestly needs a hand — and if you’d rather not deal with any of it, it’s all covered in our support plans.

The list at the end is yours to keep and act on — that part is free, and there is nothing to sign for it. If you would rather we took some or all of it on, ask on chat and we will tell you what is involved.

The Essential Eight is an Australian Government standard, and every small business should be able to measure itself against it without paying for the privilege or handing over their details. There’s no form here, so whether we ever speak is your call.

One question for each of the Essential Eight, all at Maturity Level 1 — the baseline ASD says every small business should meet. About two minutes.

Question 1 of 8Patch applications

Apps

MFA

Admin

Control

Macros

Harden

Backups

answered you are here still to answer· eight groups, one per Essential Eight strategy · click any square to jump to it

Does anyone send you a patch report each month or on request, showing what got updated and what didn't?

Choose one of these four answersor press 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 to answer

Not sure what this question is asking? Ask on chat and we’ll explain what the standard means.

The two questions everybody asks last

What does it cost — and what happens to our week if we switch?

Fair questions, so here are both answers on one page. Our plans are the same three Essential Eight maturity levels you just read about — you aren't choosing between vague bundles, you're choosing how far up the Government's own standard you want to be.

Most popular
Fortress
$139/user/month
Essential Eight · Maturity Level 1
✓ Compliant · all 8 of 8 controls at ML1
Full compliance with the Australian Government's Essential Eight baseline — all eight strategies, implemented, managed and documented so you can prove it.
Where most businesses land: unlimited support for everything, full Essential Eight compliance, and human threat hunters watching around the clock.
- Support, unlimited
  When anything breaks — laptop, printer, server, Wi-Fi, software — your team calls, we fix it. No per-incident fees, no hourly rate, no cap: the 15-minute clock disappears entirely. Because calling costs nothing, nobody hesitates to report the small problems — so they never get the chance to become big ones. Priority goes by business impact: if it's stopping work, it jumps the queue.
- New starter on Monday? Software to install, permissions to change, a printer that needs configuring? All covered, unlimited, no extra charge. Your team asks through the portal or picks up the phone and it's done — a full IT department on call, without the salaries.
- The service desk fixes what breaks; your Account Manager owns where your technology is going. One named person who knows your business — not a rotating cast. At regular reviews they walk you through your Essential Eight Cyber Security Scorecard — what improved, what's exposed, what's worth doing next and what isn't — and when you ring with a half-formed "could we…?", they already know your setup well enough to give you a straight answer.
- Security, complete
  Fortress is where real compliance starts. All eight of the Australian Government's Essential Eight strategies — application control, patching applications and operating systems, macro settings, application hardening, restricted admin privileges, multi-factor authentication and regular backups — implemented, managed and documented. When your insurer, your biggest client or a government tender asks about your security posture, you have a real answer.
- Defender blocks software known to be bad. ThreatLocker works the other way around: nothing runs unless it's on your approved list — in their words, "if it is not allowed, it does not run." Ransomware doesn't run. A dodgy download doesn't run. Approved software is also ringfenced, so your PDF reader can open documents but can't reach into your files or out to the internet. Application control is the first strategy of the Essential Eight — it's a key reason Fortress reaches full compliance.
- Antivirus stops the attacks the world already knows about; EDR is for the ones nobody has seen yet. Huntress watches the behaviour of every computer for the tell-tale signs of an intruder — a foothold hidden in a legitimate program, ransomware warming up, an attacker moving between machines — and real analysts in a 24/7 security operations centre review what it finds. When something is genuinely wrong, they isolate the machine and evict the intruder. Average response: eight minutes. At 2pm or 2am.
Start with Fortress
Knox
$179/user/month
Essential Eight · Maturity Level 2
✓ Compliant · all 8 of 8 controls at ML2
Maturity Level 2 — stronger protection for businesses adversaries deliberately target, and the level expected for government and defence work.
Businesses handling sensitive data or working with government, defence and regulated industries — where compliance isn't optional.
Everything in Fortress, plus
- Compliance & data
  Level 1 stops opportunists. Level 2 is built for adversaries who pick their targets — because of what you do, what you hold, or who your clients are. Application control tightens, patching windows shrink, MFA expands, admin privileges narrow. For government and defence work, ML2 is frequently the entry ticket. We implement every control, keep the documentation current, and stand beside you at audit time.
- If you work with Defence — directly or in the supply chain — DISP security standards aren't negotiable; without them you can't hold the contracts. We implement the required controls, configure your systems to DISP guidelines, maintain the paperwork and walk you through assessment. Already in the sector? You stay eligible without the stress. Trying to enter it? This is the technical foundation to bid.
- Most data leaks aren't hacks — they're a tired employee emailing the wrong attachment to the wrong person. Microsoft Information Protection finds your sensitive data — tax file numbers, credit cards, Medicare numbers — wherever it lives, labels it, and stops it being forwarded, shared or downloaded where it shouldn't be. The label travels with the document. For DISP, ISO 27001 and Privacy Act obligations, it's protection you can demonstrate, not just claim.
- Double the mailbox, and the most Microsoft offers — for businesses where email is the record: contracts, drawings, advice, compliance history. Even your heaviest users won't hit the ceiling.
- Knox doesn't just implement the controls — it documents them. You get the audit-ready evidence pack that DISP assessors, ISO 27001 auditors, cyber insurers and enterprise clients ask for: what's in place, how it's configured, and proof it's maintained and reviewed. When someone asks you to demonstrate your security, you hand them a document instead of scrambling.
- Advanced threat defence
  An attack isn't one event — credentials stolen by email, then files touched, then privileges escalated. If your tools work in silos, nobody sees the pattern. Defender XDR joins every signal — email, devices, identities, cloud apps — into a single picture, so our analysts see the whole attack chain at once and shut down every part of it together.
Start with Knox
Titan
$219/user/month
Essential Eight · Maturity Level 3
✓ Compliant · all 8 of 8 controls at ML3
Maturity Level 3 — the highest level, built to withstand determined, well-resourced, targeted attackers. For those who can't afford "almost."
Chosen by organisations where a breach would be catastrophic — defence primes, health, finance and legal. The standard for those who can't afford "almost."
Everything in Knox, plus
- Maximum protection · Maturity Level 3
  The ceiling of the framework — designed with determined, well-resourced and state-sponsored attackers in mind. Every one of the eight controls implemented at full strength, maintained and validated continuously so you meet the standard every day, not just at audit. Typically held by organisations with classified information, critical infrastructure or high-value intellectual property.
- At Maturity Level 3 the patching window tightens to its strictest: critical vulnerabilities in internet-facing services and key software are fixed within 48 hours of a patch being available — not at the next maintenance window. We track your exposure continuously, so the clock starts the moment a fix exists.
- Application control runs at its strictest setting — only approved software executes, approved applications are ringfenced so they can't be turned against you, and the allowlist itself is validated against Microsoft's recommended block rules. This is the control that stops ransomware and never-before-seen malware from running at all.
- The full Essential Eight user application hardening at Maturity Level 3: web browsers, Microsoft Office and PDF software are blocked from launching other programs or running unvetted web content, risky scripting like Windows PowerShell is locked down and its use logged, and legacy components attackers exploit are removed. It closes the small, technical gaps that sophisticated attackers rely on once the obvious doors are shut.
- Security events from across your environment are collected centrally, protected from tampering, and monitored. If something does happen, there's a complete, trustworthy record to investigate and report from — the difference between "we think we're fine" and being able to prove exactly what occurred.
- The administrative accounts attackers most want are the hardest to get and the most closely watched: access is restricted, granted only when it's genuinely needed, and every privileged action is logged. At ML3, no-one holds permanent keys to everything.
Start with Titan

Minimum 5 users on all plans.Add-ons available on every plan: Microsoft Copilot AI · Azure & AWS virtual servers.

Compare the three plans side by side

And the part you're actually worried about

Nearly every aged care and retirement living provider we speak to raises the same real objection, and it isn't price — it's the fortnight of chaos they assume comes with changing providers. There isn't one. The work happens before anything changes, and changing providers is our problem to manage, not yours to survive.

04
Behind-the-Scenes Setup
We prepare everything alongside the live system — care records, medication management, nurses' station PCs and the devices on the floor — and we test that nurse call still works with the network disconnected.
Resident safety is verified before anything changes.
05
The Seamless Switchover
We cut over overnight, wing by wing, with care records and medication history moving together and the audit trail intact. Nurse call and duress are never mid-transition.
Care carries on, and you can still evidence it.
06
Your Team Gets Comfortable
Permanent staff get a proper handover. Agency staff get something they can follow on a first shift, and their access is removed the day that shift ends.
Every shift has support, and no old account stays open.

See all seven steps, start to finish

Keep resident-facing systems dependable.

Book your free Essential Eight Cyber Security Scorecard and we'll show you exactly where your village stands — connectivity, resident systems, records and recovery — and what to fix first. No jargon, no obligation.

A plain-English Essential Eight Cyber Security Scorecard for your operation
Where you stand on resident connectivity, records privacy and recovery
A clear plan covering every village and your head office

Prefer to talk?

Call 1800 456 567

Our office · Level 2, Suite 201, 7 James Place, Adelaide

Aged Care & Retirement Living IT Support Adelaide

When residents live here, “back tomorrow” isn't an answer.

What does IT support for a retirement village or aged care operator include?

Eight questions to ask the IT provider you already have

The care management and medication management systems — which were patched last month, and did the mobile devices on the floor get done?

The nurses' station PCs and the floor devices — how many are on an OS that no longer receives security updates?

Agency and casual staff accounts — how many can sign in with only a password, and how quickly are they removed after a shift ends?

Who can change a medication record, and is every change attributed to a named person with a timestamp?

A device on night shift has something installed to get a job done. Does it run?

The roster and funding assessment workbook runs on macros. What permits that and blocks an emailed one?

The browsers used for My Aged Care and the provider portals — what hardening is applied to them?

If care records were encrypted tonight, how would you evidence care delivered tomorrow — and when was that restore last proved?

If the network goes down, does nurse call still work — and have you tested that this year, or are we assuming?

Asked them? Here's what to do with the answers.

The stakes are different when it's someone's home

The IT challenges we solve for villages

Resident-facing systems cannot go quiet

Residents and families expect real connectivity

Records that are sensitive and regulated

Reporting you must be able to evidence

High staff turnover and agency shifts

Villages are campuses, not offices

Getting your villages sorted is simple

Schedule a call

We assess every village and build a roadmap

We manage it, so your team can care

Everything a village needs, under one partner

Village networks & Wi-Fi

Resident safety system connectivity

Cybersecurity & Essential Eight uplift

Backups & tested recovery

Fast onboarding & offboarding

Cloud & server infrastructure

A local team resident-facing operators trust

Imagine technology your residents never have to think about

Solutions for your industry

Cybersecurity

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

Infrastructure & Cloud Management

Frequently asked questions

What IT support do retirement villages and aged care operators need?

What happens if the network behind nurse call or emergency call fails?

How do we provide reliable wifi across a whole village?

What are our obligations for resident and clinical records?

How do we onboard agency and casual care staff quickly?

Is village wifi a security risk?

What should happen when a staff member leaves?

Do independent living and residential care have different IT needs?

How do we help residents with their own devices?

How much does IT support for a retirement village cost?

Check your Essential Eight score

Does anyone send you a patch report each month or on request, showing what got updated and what didn't?

What does it cost — and what happens to our week if we switch?

Fortress

Knox

Titan

And the part you're actually worried about

Behind-the-Scenes Setup

The Seamless Switchover

Your Team Gets Comfortable

Keep resident-facing systems dependable.