Shearwater Group plc has acquired GeoLang Holdings Limited (“GeoLang”), an award-winning Cardiff based provider of Data Loss Protection (“DLP”) enterprise software for a total purchase consideration of £1.7 million, which will be settled through the issuance of 43.2 million Shearwater Group shares.
GeoLang is a UK based cyber security solution provider whose award-winning Ascema platform provides an easily deployed next generation DLP and classification solution.
With the ability to protect, detect and remediate at a true content level on premise and across cloud-based services, Ascema enables organisations to benefit from open collaboration and information sharing, whilst maintaining control of their high value data and information assets.
GeoLang will form part of Xcina, Shearwater Group’s Preston based information security and assurance business, where it will be able to leverage the company’s established infrastructure, alongside accessing the Group’s wider digital resilience capabilities.
GeoLang’s patented technology platform Ascema has been developed over the last five years by co-founder and current CEO Debbie Garside, working alongside Chairman Andrew Sleigh and the core engineering team – all of whom will remain with the company.
The Ascema platform helps organisations protect sensitive information at the content level. It discovers, classifies and remediates data across the corporate infrastructure, via an ability to integrate with a range of authorized enterprise applications, either on premise or within the cloud.
It detects sentences including confidential information, either within the original document or extracted and included in unclassified documents or emails. The information can then be quarantined or blocked in real time from documents and email streams (as opposed to just the files themselves).
Commented David Williams, Chairman of Shearwater Group plc: “I’m delighted that Debbie and the team have joined the Group. GeoLang represents another example of a great British technology business with significant potential to scale.
“Under Debbie’s leadership and with the support of UK academia and the Government, the business is now ideally poised to take the next step on its journey, and we look forward to supporting it in its development and helping it reach its full potential.”
GeoLang received early stage support through an Innovate UK collaboration project with Jaguar Land Rover and the University of Surrey, and in 2015, was named as the UK’s Most Innovative Small Cyber Security Company at InfoSec.
Michael (Mo) Stevens, Group Chief Executive Officer, Shearwater Group plc, added: “Establishing a presence within the DLP market has been an objective since we launched our digital resilience strategy last year. GeoLang’s innovative, patent protected technology will underpin our proposition within this rapidly growing sector.
“By adding another “channel first” SaaS business to the Group’s portfolio, we expect to see the benefits of improved cash generation over the coming years as the business scales in line with the considerable market opportunity we are seeing.”
GeoLang co-founder and CEO Debbie Garside said it was good time to be joining Shearwater Group : “Finding the right partner to support us in achieving our growth plans has been critical and in Shearwater Group, we believe we have done that.
“Their strategy of building a digital resilience group with such a strong UK focus resonates well with us and we are very excited about the potential for Ascema and the wider Shearwater Group as a whole.”
Whilst traditionally deployed within highly regulated industries, DLP solutions are increasingly being more widely adopted by organisations to help them protect their critical data and information assets as regulatory compliance and data safeguarding become key priorities for companies of all sizes.
