We're becoming Bastion IT
From 1 July 2026, your IT and cybersecurity services move to a new brand. Same team, same standards, more behind us.
The teams at Gray Area Consulting and Time Out! Computers are thrilled to bring you an announcement that we have been working hard on behind the scenes.
From the 1st of July, IT and Cybersecurity Services will operate under a new brand, Bastion IT.
The legal entity behind it is Bastion Cybersecurity & Managed Services Pty Ltd, trading as Bastion IT and CyberSafeNSecure.
What this means for you, in plain terms
Your day-to-day support doesn’t change. The team you’ve been working with stays put. The way we look after your business stays the same. What changes is the scale of what’s sitting behind us.
What’s changing
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- The name on the box. Invoices, email signatures, the website, and the logo on the management agent installed on your devices. All Bastion IT from 1 July.
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- Banking details. New entity, new payment details. If we’re set up as a payee or on recurring payment in your AP system, you’ll need to update those. We’ll send the new banking info with the first Bastion invoice so you’ve got everything in one place.
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- The team grows. We go from three people to six, with Ross, Jody, and Todd joining from the Time Out! Computers side. That means more hands on deck, faster response when you need help, and more capacity for the bigger projects.
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- A second office at Carindale alongside our Yatala presence. Stronger physical coverage across South East Queensland, and a better setup for field work and onsite visits.
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- Sharper cybersecurity focus. Bastion has been built around the reality that cyber threats are now the number one risk to most small and medium businesses, and the operation is structured to reflect that.
What isn’t changing
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- Your day-to-day. Same person to call, same number that still rings, same email that gets to the right place. Whether you’ve been dealing with Michael, Zoe, or Natalie, no change.
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- The support team you know. Zoe and Natalie are staying right where they are.
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- The way we work. Same approach, same standards, same plain English. No runaround, no hiding behind jargon, no surprises on the invoice.
Your new contact details
1300 900 222
Sales: sales@bastionit.com.au
Support: support@bastionit.com.au
Accounts: accounts@bastionit.com.au
www.bastionit.com.au (Launching 1st of July)
What’s happening to Gray Area Consulting
Gray Area isn’t going away. The brand sticks around with a sharper focus on AI strategy and implementation. Helping businesses figure out where AI fits, where it doesn’t, and how to use it without creating new risks for the rest of the operation. More on that direction over the coming months.
For most of you, the practical answer is that your IT and cybersecurity work moves to Bastion IT. If you want to talk about AI in your business, Gray Area is still the front door for that conversation.
What happens next
Between now and 1 July, no action needed on your end. We’ll handle the transition. Closer to the date, you’ll get a short follow-up with the practical details, including the new banking information and any paperwork that needs updating.
If you’ve got questions, ring me direct or flick me an email. Always happy to walk you through what this means for your business specifically.
Thanks for the trust you’ve shown me and the team over the years. Not lost on me. Looking forward to building on it from here.
– Michael Kriewaldt
Want to get to know the new directors?
Read on to hear from Michael as he reflects on the past decade of Gray Area Consulting, and shares his insights about the new venture, and Ross Bladin of Time Out! Computers.
If you’re likd to get to the know Bastion IT team more contacting us to schedule a meet and greet with the directors. Whether you are wanting to check-in about your services or just say hello, Michael and Ross are more excited than anyone about the future of Bastion IT to support your business.
Note From the Director:
Michael Kriewaldt
For close to a year, I’ve been working with the teams at Time Out! Computers in Carindale and CyberSafe and Secure to bring three businesses together as one operation. Three businesses, three sets of clients, three skill sets. From July, we run as one team under one brand.
The reason it’s taken twelve months to do this properly is that I wanted the structure right before announcing anything. Combining businesses sounds simple on paper. In practice, you’ve got systems to align, processes to unify, and standards to lift across the board. None of that is the kind of thing you do quickly if you want to do it well.
Doing IT and cybersecurity properly for small and medium businesses is getting harder, not easier. Threats keep climbing. The tech stack keeps getting more complex. The standards businesses need to meet, especially in compliance-heavy industries, are rising every year. Going bigger gives us the scale to do this work properly, with more specialists, better tools, and more capacity when you need it.
I’ve always said I’d rather tell a client they don’t need me than sell them something they don’t. That doesn’t change. Bastion IT is structured around the same principle, with more horsepower behind it.
Note From the Director:
Ross Bladin
I started Time Out! Computers in Brisbane in 1998. More than twenty-five years on, we’re still doing what we always did: looking after people and their technology, and treating them the way we’d want to be treated. From July, we do that as part of one team under one brand.
For the better part of a year, I’ve been working with Michael and his team to bring our businesses together as one. Time Out! Computers and CyberSafeNSecure, the two I’ve built, are joining with his side of things to become Bastion IT. It isn’t a decision I took lightly. When you’ve spent this long looking after clients, some of them for fifteen and twenty years, you don’t hand that over to just anyone. I needed to be sure the people, the standards, and the care were right before I’d put my name to it.
The reason we took our time was simple. I wanted my clients looked after better, not just differently. Bringing businesses together properly means aligning systems, lifting standards, and making sure nothing slips while it happens. We weren’t willing to rush that.
Doing IT and cybersecurity properly for small and medium businesses is harder than it’s ever been. The threats are relentless. The tools you need to defend against them are more complex and more costly than any one small operation can carry on its own. Going bigger means more specialists, better tools, and the capacity to be there when you need us. Big enough to be there, small enough to care is how I’ve always run things. Bastion IT lets us keep that promise with a lot more behind it.
What hasn’t changed is what matters most. We’ve always put people first, with honesty, integrity and care. That’s how I built Time Out! Computers, and it’s exactly what Bastion IT stands for.
