Daniel Lai (ArchTis)
Publicly-listed information security provider archTIS has stepped into the North American market through the acquisition of cyber security outfit Nucleus Cyber for $9.75 million.
The sale price is made of $6.25 million in archTIS shares and up to $3.5 million deferred consideration in archTIS shares upon meeting certain revenue and corporate milestones.
The acquisition opens archTIS to exploring new geographies and commercial agreements via Nucleus Cyber’s (NC) Microsoft co-sell agreement that exposes them to Microsoft’s field sales and channel resellers. The co-sell arrangement has just launched into the US and will expand globally through the Microsoft start-up program.
According to archTIS, the acquisition fits in with its strategy in being a global provider of policy enforced access control platforms for securing and sharing information. The two companies have previously held partnership agreements and all key Nucleus executives will join the archTIS team.
Nucleus is headquartered in Boston, US, with a development office in Melbourne, and has a range of clients across government and defence, financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy and manufacturing including Corning, State Street Bank, the Australian Department of Health and Department of Defence and Care First.
“This acquisition is transformative for archTIS. The acquisition of Nucleus Cyber expands our offering into the Microsoft business product suite and opens up new global sales and distribution channels, providing significant new revenue streams to the business,” archTIS CEO Daniel Lai said.
“This forms a critical component of our global strategy of being the world’s premier provider of policy enforced access control platforms for securing and sharing digital information.
“We have known and worked with the Nucleus Cyber team for an extended period, and we look forward to welcoming them to the archTIS business and continuing to facilitate secure collaboration and information protection for our clients.”
The two companies recently completed their first successful Nucleus Cyber licence sale to Canberra-based software engineering company 12thLevel.
NC Protect solution is currently used to protect information for file sharing, messaging and chat across collaboration tools such as Microsoft Office 365 – SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, Exchange, Yammer, Dropbox, Nutanix Files and Windows file shares.
Nucleus Cyber CEO Kurt Mueffelmann added both teams share a long relationship and common technology approach of using Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) in securing sensitive information.
“Secure information sharing across enterprise and government is an ongoing problem, exacerbated by the exponential increase in remote work and the use of Microsoft’s collaboration tools that have been fuelled by the pandemic,” he said.
“The combination of archTIS and Nucleus Cyber technologies and talent ensures we are at the forefront of providing market leading information security solutions. I look forward to joining archTIS as its Chief Operating Officer and continuing to accelerate our growth.”
In the past 12 months, archTIS has secured a number of contract wins, most recently picking up a contract valued at $4.2 million with the federal government’s Department of Defence and secured its first defence industry contract for its Kojensi platform with global military system integrator Northrop Grumman in June.
In May the company also landed a deal with Curtin University to build and implement access controls for its SSA DataLake.
