S3 expands into Western Virginia

RALEIGH, N.C.—Strategic Security Solutions (S3), a provider of engineered security solutions, has acquired Intelligent Security Integrations, LLC, expanding its reach into the Lynchburg, Va. market.

S3 CEO and SSN Class of 2016 “20 under 40” Alumni Jay Slaughterbeck told Security Systems News that all ISI employees have become S3 employees and will be going through a new hire orientation in Raleigh next week along with some other new hires from the Raleigh office.

“S3 will continue to operate out of the ISI office in Lynchburg until we’ve had time to fully complete a 3-5 year plan for the market and assess the space requirements that will be required,” said Slaughterbeck, noting that they will be adding additional resources and infrastructure to the “already talented staff in the office.”

S3’s Raleigh Branch Manager Pat Zakaria is very excited about this acquisition, noting, “Christian [Batchelor] and his team at ISI are very talented and will be a great addition to our team. We’ve partnered with them for a long time and they are the right fit for the S3 culture.”

Looking at S3’s long-term growth strategy, Slaughterbeck said the decision to move into the Lynchburg market “was an obvious step … now that we have the infrastructure in place to expand our company to new area, it’s exciting to have Lynchburg become our first branch office outside of Raleigh.”

While S3 performs implementations globally for key clients, Western Virginia has historically been an area of where it has maintained a significant workload. This expansion to Lynchburg will allow S3 to enhance their service to customers in the area, while offering a significant talent pool for the company from the local colleges and universities.

“ISI and S3 were partnering to support several clients, and we believe this acquisition will specifically strengthen the support for those clients even more,” added Slaughterbeck.

ISI focuses primarily on healthcare, higher education and high-tech companies, leveraging the latest technologies.  “ISI is very familiar with cloud based solutions as Christian and his team are very tech-savvy,” said Slaughterbeck. “They had vetted cloud based platforms and had begun deploying them but the overall number of cloud based solutions was insignificant overall.”

With all that has gone on so far in 2020, “We are grateful to say that sales are actually slightly up over last year, with a forecast trending towards another successful growth year,” Slaughterbeck said, noting that the uptick has not been specific to the past month or so, as many have seen with this COVID situation.

“S3 has been surprisingly consistent all year,” he explained.  “We’ve worked hard in n attempt to stay in front of the situations arising from COVID and have seen increased demand for specialized reporting requirements which we were prepared for and have been able to meet the desires of most customers.”