Membership profiling and Secure Networking (BuddyPress? UserPro?)

Hi all!

I’m building a site for (SAINE – South African Innovation Network) and one of the requests have been that we create a site that has ‘membership profiling’ and where members can search for other members according to what they’re looking for (i.e a university, incubator or corporate searching for certain people to create a professional relationship with) and then communicate privately with so that intellectual property can be discussed securely.

I have looked into BuddyPress and UserPro, but to be honest i haven’t used either of these platforms. I know you can integrate the two together, and I like what i see in BuddyPress from a community perspective and it’s excessive functionality and plugins, but i’m not sure about how secure it is?

I would like to carry on using the Jupiter theme by Artbees (dayam whatta great theme!?).

Are there any other plugins/platforms that I should look into for my clients request?
Is BuddyPress the best way to go?

Thanks in advance!
Callum