UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones MBE today announces the acquisition of another cloud and cybersecurity service provider, Secure Information Assurance (S-IA), following the announcement of a £2.3 million investment to bolster his firm’s government data centre space.

S-IA provides secure cloud hosting and cybersecurity services to the UK Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office and a raft of other UK government organisations.

The deal gives UKFast access to IL3 and IL4/Official-Sensitive accreditations as well as the UK’s highest security rated hosting, known as List-X. The move is a further step towards the high-level security services market, just six months after the acquisition of cybersecurity specialists Pentest Limited by Jones’ security business Secarma in July 2016.

Established in 2003, S-IA is focused exclusively on government and public sector services, bringing 14 years’ experience of managing process and procedure for the highest level of government to UKFast.

S-IA CEO Martin Knapp is set to head up Jones’ G-Cloud team as part of the move, targeting a share of the £1.69bn currently spent through the government procurement framework.

S-IA has hosted services for the UK Cabinet Office since 2003 and is a long-standing, trusted partner of the Ministry of Defence.

Sarah Walton, Corporate Partner at Weightmans LLP and advisor to the sellers said: “We are delighted to have worked on a deal which secured a great result for both companies, their customers and staff. UKFast is an innovative and ambitious company and S-IA has an exciting future ahead.”

Financial due diligence was carried out by Nicola Merritt at Dow Schofield Watts and Legal due diligence by Nabarro, with UKFast legal team leading on the deal documents.