Cygnia clears £10m sales hurdle amid services spurt

Brummie security VAR says penetration testing and managed services lifted turnover by a third last year

Security VAR Cygnia says a surge in penetration testing and managed services sales have helped it burst through the £10m revenue barrier.

The Birmingham-based Check Point partner hit the magic marker in the 12 months to 31 December 2015, its eighth full year of trading.

That's a jump of about a third on the previous year, Cygnia managing director Jon Busfield said of the results, which are being audited.

"The growth has come from managed services and penetration testing services, and selling Check Point technologies," he said.

"We have increased our Check Point sales by selling threat prevention into larger accounts."

Referencing a recent spate of consolidation that has seen the likes of Nebulas, Sysec and NTS being snapped up, Busfield estimated there are now only a dozen or so independent UK security VARs of a larger stature.

"The consolidation is coming about because of the emphasis on cybersecurity, and GDPR is going to put even more pressure on organisations to sort themselves out," he said.

"We haven't got a desire to exit at this point in time, but you never know what opportunities are around the corner. I think the Nebulas one [SecureLink bought them earlier this week] will be good for them as it will add more scale, and capabilities they didn't have."

Busfield said Cygnia - whose revenues are split evenly between the public and private sector - is currently looking at a range of end-point security and forensics vendors to bring into its portfolio, with behavioural attack detection specialist LightCyber its most recent signing.