The new company employs a total of 65 people, with no staff being made redundant from either SIFT or Stratsec during the merger. The new company will retain the stratsec name and recruit 4-5 new staff immediately with a view to further expansion later this year, according to the new company's CTO and SIFT founder Nick Ellsmore.

"We (SIFT) had 15 before the merger, and certainly none being made redundant," he told Risky.biz. "We're looking to recruit 4-5 straight away, and will probably need close to 10 more by the end of the year."

The Australian information security industry has been too fragmented for too long, Ellsmore says, with no real market leader in the "independent" security consulting space.

"We now have the scale, the breadth, and the depth, to take on virtually any information security project that can be thrown at us," Ellsmore claims. "[SIFT and stratsec] both had a vision for building the dominant firm in this space, and given a good cultural fit between the firms, and a good relationship between the three Directors... we saw an opportunity to fast-track that growth and took it."