Nine23
UK sovereign and government accredited, for classified data no commercial VDR can touch.
- Headquarters
- Southampton
- Founded
- 2012
- Segment
- UK Ministry of Defence, defence primes and SMEs, national security, public protection
- Hosting
- United Kingdom, declared on G-Cloud 14, in UK sovereign FSC and PASF accredited data centres
- Encryption
- Encryption at rest and in transit
- Free trial
- Not offered
The assessment
Nine23 is a UK high-assurance managed service provider based at Southampton Science Park and incorporated in 2012. Its LynX FileShare product is a UK sovereign hosted file sharing and data room service built for organisations working across the Ministry of Defence, national security and public protection.
It is included here because it answers a question no commercial virtual data room can. It operates in FSC and PASF accredited UK data centres, handles data classified up to OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE, carries NPPV3 staff vetting and UKAS-accredited ISO 27001, and connects to government networks including RLI, LECN, HSCN and PSN. Its price is published on G-Cloud 14 at £1,000 per instance per month.
It is emphatically not a transaction platform. There is no Q&A module, no deal workflow, no bidder management and no free trial. Ranking it against Datasite on deal workflow would be meaningless, which is why it is listed separately.
The right and possibly only answer if you are handling UK government data at OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE, or sitting in a Ministry of Defence supply chain that needs FSC accreditation. For anything resembling a commercial M&A process it is the wrong tool: you would be paying £1,000 a month for sovereignty you do not need and doing without the Q&A and bidder management you do.
Nine23 Ltd, company number 08118696, incorporated 26 June 2012, at 2 Venture Road, Southampton Science Park, Chilworth, Southampton SO16 7NP.
Strengths
- Genuinely UK sovereign and government accredited, in FSC and PASF accredited data centres
- Handles data classified up to OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE, which no commercial data room on this table can touch
- ISO 27001 accredited by UKAS, plus Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus and NPPV3 vetting
- Connections to RLI, LECN, HSCN and PSN government networks
- Helps Ministry of Defence supply chain firms meet FSC accreditation requirements
- Published sterling pricing on G-Cloud 14
Limitations
- This is not an M&A data room: it is a managed file share for defence supply chains, with no Q&A, no deal workflow and no bidder management
- No free trial
- Instance-based pricing at £1,000 per month is expensive for a single small transaction
- Irrelevant to most commercial dealmakers
- Users do not control the data location
Pricing, hosting and certification
Published on G-Cloud 14 at £1,000 per instance per month. Instance-based pricing is expensive for a single small transaction.
✓ Published on the provider's own site
United Kingdom, declared on G-Cloud 14, in UK sovereign FSC and PASF accredited data centres. Users do not control the location.
- ISO/IEC 27001 (UKAS accredited)
- Cyber Essentials
- Cyber Essentials Plus
- NPPV3 vetting
- NHS DSP IG Toolkit
Counted only where named publicly by the provider.
Typical use cases
- Defence supply chain file sharing
- National security
- Public protection
- OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE data handling
Sources consulted
Last reviewed 26 July 2026
What we could not confirm
Published openly, because a gap in the evidence is information too. Anything listed here could not be verified from a primary source, so we have not scored Nine23 as though it were true.
- Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus are declared on G-Cloud, which is government-hosted but supplier self-declared