A York-based tech firm has been taken over by a St Albans business.

Matobo was founded by Ben and Cath Giles in 2012 and provides cyber security awareness training and has clients including the BBC, London Fire Brigade and around 20% of UK local authorities.

A BAFTA award-winning filmmaker for work that featured Sir David Attenborough, Ben writes, edits and publishes Matobo’s digital content used in its online training programme.

Courses include the Cyber Ninjas series of e-learning modules certified by the National Cyber Security Centre.

Ben said: “We take immense pride in the quality of training we provide to our customers. Omniplex Learning was a perfect fit to build upon our work by supporting our customers and enhancing our training and services.”

Omniplex, based in St Albans, has added Matobo to its existing suite of digital learning products and services which offers authoring tools, learning management systems, digital adoption and in-house design, content and training services.

Patrick Jocelyn, CEO of Omniplex Learning, said: “Our customers have identified cyber security as a critical and evolving challenge. The costs of a successful cyber breach to a business are substantial, both financially and reputationally.

“By integrating Matobo’s industry-leading courses into our portfolio, we are poised to provide our customers with digital learning in areas that are of the utmost importance to them.

“We plan to expand our offerings to address the new security and GDPR challenges associated with AI and other threats. This will complement our Good e-Learning digital transformation courses which we acquired just over a year ago.”

Omniplex Learning is backed by private equity investor LDC, with which it partnered in December 2020.

Nathan Leah, KBS Corporate Associate Director, who advised on the sale, said: “I strongly believe Matobo will continue its success story in conjunction with Omniplex, who are a sophisticated and high calibre operator. I wish all parties the very best for the future.

“Special thanks to Harriet Jones of Mackrell Solicitors for her diligence and collaboration throughout.”