The archTIS board. From left: chair Professor Stephen Smith, Leanne Graham, Bruce Talbot, Daniel Lai and Wayne Zekulich. Photos: Supplied.
Booming Canberra cyber-security firm archTIS Limited is now trading on the Australian Stock Exchange after a successful Initial Public Offering (IPO) and $8 million capital raising.
The company said the listing on the ASX would progress the development and commercialisation of a suite of secure content and collaboration software products, called Kojensi, for the government and commercial sectors.
It said that having generated $13 million in services consulting revenue over the past six years, archTIS looked forward to scaling globally through the company’s next generation secure information sharing and collaboration technology.
Managing Director Daniel Lai said overwhelming demand for the company’s products had driven the capital raising and listing, which will enable it to accelerate the development of those products, with testing of the new product range starting later this year.
He said there was a need for federal and state government agencies to share and collaborate on information securely, as well as those industries that service government and were part of the supply chain.
ArchTIS had proven experience in secure information collaboration and sharing within the highest security areas of government.
“The difference between us and other products is that we solved a problem in the top secret space in the Department of Defence and what we did is take that security model and apply it to this new government platform, Kojensigov, and apply it to a lower level. So we’ve come down from top secret, not having to build it up, that’s a huge differentiation,” Mr Lai said.
The archTIS team.
The cloud-based Kojensi suite of software solutions treated security and information sharing as one issue, whereas traditionally, these two challenges were treated as mutually exclusive.
“You don’t do security as an afterthought, which is what has been happening – people developing products then working out how do I secure it,” Mr Lai said.
“Often when we wrap security around the product, instead of embedding it in the product, you always end up with vulnerabilities and loopholes.”
The company’s outlook is global, with products already accredited in the US. The same challenges were confronting agencies around the world, and they were all looking for a similar solution, Mr Lai said.
He said the Canberra company, which started in an O’Connor kitchen 12 years ago, was proud of its roots and now had deep knowledge, deep experience and a deep relationship with government.
“The thing we’re excited about is when we talk to the US and the UK we’re leading the world in this, and I know you have other markets out there like the Israeli cyber security market and the US. We’re just fiercely proud to lead Australia in this space and demonstrate that to the rest of the world. That’s the goal here – to deliver a world-class company from Australia and from Canberra,” he said.
Mr Lai said archTIS was part of a very strong community in Canberra in the cyber-security space, including Penten which has just been named Telstra Business of the Year.
He said the company had attracted an extremely high-calibre board, including former Labor federal minister Stephen Smith, which showed confidence in its future.
The capital raising was supported by existing well-known investors SG Hiscock and Merchant Group, which have been long-term supporters of the company and have increased their holdings via the IPO fundraising round.
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