Australia’s newest tech stock archTIS made a steady ASX debut today.

The Canberra-based cyber-security play listed at 20.5c after raising $8 million selling shares at 20c each in an initial public offering.

The stock fell slightly to 19c shortly after it debuted at 12pm AEST Friday under the code AR9.

archTIS had originally planned to raise up to $10 million — including oversubscriptions — and list on August 27.

archTIS – an amalgam of “architecture” and “trusted information system” – aims to solve the problem of “how to share information, while avoiding it falling into the wrong hands”.

The technology has been “successfully accredited for TOP SECRET use by the Australian and United States Governments”, a company statement says — capital letters and all.

Founder Bruce Talbot launched the business in 2005 after creating an information sharing platform to host classified information from the United States and Australian governments.

The platform lets staff access this classified information according to their security clearance levels.

archTIS provides security consulting to the federal government, including security systems for the Australian Defence Force and a “helicopter dock data management” program that works with the Navy’s logistics services.

Chief executive Daniel Lai told Stockhead in July that archTIS had prepared for its listing journey by compiling a board of “the highest calibre”.

Heavyweight board

Board members include Rudd and Gillard front-bencher Stephen Smith and former Xero (ASX:XRO) sales boss Leanne Grahame.

“The market demand from governments and industry to solve the challenges of collaborating on and sharing information securely — a problem we have solved — has meant that the timing was right to grow the business to meet this demand with products and solutions that are proven and trusted by the Australian Department of Defence,” Mr Lai told Stockhead.

archTIS had a 12-year track record of delivering on global information security, he said.

“We are an Australian company that is leading the world in the next generation of Secure Content and Collaboration products and it seemed natural to invite Australian investors to join us on that journey.”

Some $2 million of the float proceeds are slated for project development work.

The company’s key projects are called Konjensi and DataKloak, which have a range of features to let governments share data securely and manage access privileges across complex networks where staff have different security clearance levels.

Mr Lai and founder Bruce Talbot, who is now the chief technology officer, own about 5 per cent each after the IPO.

At the end of December, the company generated $131,000 in revenue and posted a loss of $934,000. It had $2.5 million cash in the bank at the end of 2017.

More information at www.archtis.com.