A young space company moves fast: an ESA contract to deliver, a UK Space Agency grant to report against, a Series A round to close, and a small in house team running real time operations on expensive hardware. Each of those carries a security expectation that ordinary IT was never set up to meet. We run, secure, build, and prove the technology behind the work, so an ISO 27001 clause or a grant condition is never the thing that slows a launch. UK based, UKAS accredited, a Cyber Essentials certification body, and twenty minutes from the Harwell campus.
In space tech the security pressure does not arrive as an abstract policy. It arrives as a clause in an ESA contract that wants ISO 27001, a cyber hygiene condition attached to a UK Space Agency or Innovate UK grant, an investor diligence checklist in a Series A, and export control sitting over a stack full of US technology. For a ten to a hundred person company with one or two people holding IT and security together, that is a real workload. We know what each of those actually requires, and we build the posture and the evidence to satisfy it without pulling your engineers off the mission.
Our base is in Reading, around twenty minutes from the Harwell campus and the cluster of space organisations around the UK Space Agency, the European Space Agency's UK presence, and RAL Space. That matters when a ground station rig needs a hands on look or a launch window is close and you want someone on site, not a ticket in a queue. The wider UK space sector is spread from Glasgow to Bristol and the Surrey heritage cluster, and modern IT and security mean we can support companies there securely and remotely. The genuinely local part, the part we can prove, is Harwell.
The pressures are specific to a fast growing space business, and so is the cost of getting them wrong. These are the problems we are most often brought in to solve.
An ESA contract or a grant lands with an ISO 27001 expectation or a cyber condition attached, and the team has no certification and no time to build one from scratch. The deadline does not move to suit your IT. We close that gap on a timeline that fits the contract.
A small in house team is running real time operations on costly hardware and keeping the office working, with no capacity left for security. Things get missed, not through carelessness but through sheer load. We take the security weight off them and give the operation room to breathe.
Payload designs, mission data, control links, and the export controlled components in your stack are exactly what a capable adversary or an over broad collaborator could reach. The work has to be defended, segmented, and recoverable, and you need to be able to show that it is.
We do not sell space a different product. We point the same four disciplines at the obligations and risks that are specific to it, and link you to the service that does the work. One partner, no gaps between suppliers for a failure to hide in.
UK based support and UK hosted infrastructure for a team that runs simulation, image processing, and mission operations. We manage the cloud the heavy compute leans on and keep a demanding operation online, with MDR included as standard rather than sold as an upsell.
We are a Cyber Essentials certification body, so the route from a grant or contract that requires it to being certified runs through us directly, with no third party handover. Email and endpoint security sit behind it, hardening the everyday systems an attacker reaches for first.
Bespoke software, integration, and applied AI built by the same team that runs and secures it, on UK hosted infrastructure with a full audit trail. The tooling that sits around your mission systems is the thing we build, and the thing we can stand behind and account for.
We are ISO 27001 certified ourselves and UKAS accredited, and we advise growing companies through the same standard, building the policies, controls, and audit trail an ESA assessor or an investor expects to inspect. The evidence is produced as you go, not reconstructed under pressure before a review.
US technology components are everywhere in a modern space stack, so ITAR, EAR, and UK export controls are part of normal compliance rather than an edge case. We build and run the access controls that keep restricted material away from unauthorised foreign access, with UK based staff and UK data residency throughout. The legal interpretation of what is controlled and who may see it stays with your export control advisers. The technology that enforces it is ours.
With a clear read of what the contract actually requires, which is often ISO 27001 with Cyber Essentials Plus as a practical first step. We are ISO 27001 certified and UKAS accredited ourselves, and a Cyber Essentials certification body, so we can take you from a standing start through certification on a timeline built around the contract rather than a generic compliance plan. You get one team for both, not a handover between an advisor and an assessor.
Yes. Grant terms in this sector increasingly carry cyber hygiene and reporting conditions, and the honest answer to what they need depends on the specific wording, which we will read with you. In most cases Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus, with the controls and reporting genuinely in place behind it, satisfies the condition. We put that in place and keep producing the evidence the funder expects to see.
Series A and later rounds now routinely surface cyber and IT governance as a diligence item, and the time to get it in order is before the data room opens. We assess where you stand, close the obvious gaps, and assemble the policies, controls, and evidence an investor will ask for, so the question is answered with a document rather than a scramble. It is the same groundwork that supports ISO 27001, so the work does double duty.
Genuinely local. Our base is in Reading, around twenty minutes from the Harwell campus, so when a ground station rig or a test setup needs a hands on look, or a deadline is close and you want someone on site, that is straightforward for us. For space companies elsewhere in the UK, we work securely and remotely, the way modern IT and security already work, with on site visits arranged where they help. The Harwell proximity is the part that is genuinely local, and we are happy to prove it.
We can build and run the IT environment that keeps restricted material away from unauthorised foreign access, with UK based staff, UK data residency, and need to know access controls. ITAR, EAR, and UK export control compliance itself is primarily a legal and procedural matter, so we work alongside your export control advisers rather than replacing them. The technology controls are ours; the legal interpretation stays with the specialists.
Send us the clause in your contract, the conditions on your grant, or the diligence list from your investors. We will tell you plainly where you stand and what it takes to close the gap. We reply within one working day, and you will speak to an engineer, not a salesperson.
Hello, I am Ainsley, the assistant here at Dead Simple Computing. I built nothing today, but I am one of the governed AI assistants we build for clients. Ask me about managed IT, cyber security, software and AI, or governance and audit.
Ainsley is an assistant and can be wrong. For anything that matters you will speak to an engineer.
