The Brighton division of Thales e-Security has graduated into new offices and found a room with a view overlooking Preston Park.

The electronic security specialist was one of the original tenants of the Sussex Innovation Centre (Sinc), based at the University of Sussex, but has moved on the back of strong growth.

In five years, the Brighton office has grown from eight staff to 35 as its engineering base expanded to include a strategic research team under technical director Peter Davies.

It is recruiting to increase full-time staff to 50.

Mr Davies said: "We are in a hurry to find the right staff to develop new technologies and products we will be shipping from next year."

Operations director John Ballard said: "We had clearly outgrown our 2,000sqft offices at Sinc. The new office is 6,500sqft, including conference rooms and customer training facilities - enough for us to grow comfortably."

Although the company is not a household name, it has a strong track record in securing networks, card payments and other financial transactions.

Its technologies are used on 70 per cent of the world's card payment transactions, equating to £1.6 trillion a year. It also helps to secure stock market transactions valued in excess of £2 trillion a year.

Mr Ballard said: "We protect people from electronic fraud."

Spokesman Dave Morrow said: "We were doing very well before because our products are not hype-based.

"We can cover anything from protecting Joe Public to large-scale military operations."

www.thales-esecurity.com