Cybersecurity provider goes bust owing £3.5m to unsecured creditors - administrator report

Reports of 60 job losses

Fallen cybersecurity provider XQ Cyber went bust owing £3.5m to unsecured creditors, a statement of affairs filed with Companies House has revealed.

XQ Digital Resilience, which traded as XQ Cyber, went bust in October, with a notice in The London Gazette listing David Rubin & Partners as the firm's administrator.

A statement of affairs document, dated 25 October but only made available on the Companies House website this week, reveals that trade creditors are owed just over £500,000.

The largest unsecured creditor is an individual who was listed as a person with significant control of the business in January 2017. His loan to the business is marked at £2.4m.

The report states that £304,374 is likely to be available to unsecured creditors.

According to XQ Cyber's website, it is now a trading name of a new company - CS Information Security Limited - which was set up in October.

David Carroll, who is listed as XQ Cyber's CEO on the website, is a person of significant control in both entities.

XQ Cyber offers solutions around cyber risk management and reporting.

Multiple reports online have claimed that around 60 members of staff have been made redundant, but CRN has not been able to verify this.

Former employees of the business have also stated the same figure on LinkedIn as they search for new jobs.

CRN attempted to phone XQ Cyber multiple times, but the phone number listed on its website appeared to be disconnected. We have also contacted the firm's generic email address. The administrator has also been contacted for comment.

Aside from the investor, HM Revenue and Customs is the largest creditor, at £473,649.

A handful of tech suppliers are owned five- and six-figure sums.

The administrator stated that XQ Cyber's intellectual property and goodwill has a book value of £645,599 - but expects to realise £200,000 of this.