Sydney-based Securicy, which helps medium-sized enterprises meet the cybersecurity requirements of larger customers, is developing healthcare and disaster recovery solutions in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

The company, which went through the Boston cohort of the prestigious Techstars accelerator in 2018, had been planning on working on the products before the pandemic. The crisis has intensified demand so the team is now moving forward with them.

Securicy is also working with Innovacorp to offer its services to Nova Scotian companies and help them work more seamlessly with enterprise clients.

“In our strategic planning, we had put in a healthcare solution some time ago,” said Co-Founder and CEO Darren Gallop in a phone interview. “And before COVID-19 really landed on North American soil, we had half to three-quarters of it in development, so we really doubled down on what we’re doing in healthcare.”

Gallop and his co-founder Laird Wilton began Securicy when their former startup Marcato Digital, which provides admin software to music festivals and other events, learned it needed cybersecurity certification to work with major corporations like Walt Disney Co. So they launched a new startup that would help other companies understand what needed to be done in the cybersecurity field.

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Securicy launched its product in the first quarter of 2019, and its revenues grew 3.8 times by the end of March 2020, when it had a strong book of prospects. Then the pandemic hit and the company and its customers spent a few weeks assessing the situation.

“Things were looking really great and then they weren’t ,” said Gallop. “In March, a whole lot of our funnel was questionable.  . . . But by the end of March and early April, we started seeing other deals coming in and we started looking at other verticals.”

As a cybersecurity company, Securicy’s management team had given a lot of thought to recovering from disaster, whether it was a cyber-attack, a natural disaster or whatever. It had internal plans for recovering from an unforeseen work stoppage, and suddenly it was helping its customers form recovery plans to emerge from the pandemic.

Similarly, the company had planned to launch sector-specific products and the pandemic has accelerated those plans.  Healthcare was going to be a “pillar” of its growth in 2020 and one employee had even received special training in 2019 to help with the move into the sector.

“If you’re selling to regulated industries like healthcare, it doesn’t really matter if all your employees are at home; you still have to be regulatory compliant,” said Gallop. “That’s the thing we help people do.”

In working with other Nova Scotian companies, Gallop said Innovacorp has been progressive in ensuring that its own portfolio companies meet cybersecurity requirements, and is now extending that to other Nova Scotian companies. Securicy has worked with seven companies under the plan and intends to work with more.

With a fulltime staff of 17, Gallop had been planning to start raising capital this spring but is now waiting until the fourth quarter.  The company raised $1.2 million last summer from an investment group that included Innovacorp, Panache Ventures and Concrete Ventures.  Gallop said the company has enough money to last for a while, and the crisis has brought in new clients.

Said Gallop: “We’ve had companies come in where they wouldn’t be clients if it weren’t for COVID-19”