Cyber risk has become hugely topical now really because governments are starting to understand the importance of it. Someone said to me recently there are only two types of companies, those who know that they’ve had a cyber attack and those that don’t. But everybody’s had them in some form or other. It has become a very important to governments, including the UK government and it really needs to now come onto the agenda of boards. Boards need to be looking at it but it’s not just an IT issue. People have thought about it as an IT issue having a cyber attack. But it’s much more complex now and the old idea of corporate espionage, for want of a better term has moved into this space. Companies are very much at risk now of having their information stolen effectively, and that can be corporate secrets of any kind. So the risks are much higher than they ever were, and it’s not just corporates, we see it in other areas such as the forces, the concerns are growing there. But it’s certainly raising … the profiling of this is growing. It’s becoming more and more important and government is certainly concerned that this is where everybody’s at risk.

I’m not an IT expert. But there are certainly small changes that companies can do and there are specialist organisations out there that can help them to do that. There are a number of small changes companies can make that will effectively stop 80% of them. And that is an incredibly cost effective way to go. You can never stop it completely. The world of IT is such as we all know with computer viruses, as soon as you close one loophole or close one avenue then another one opens. So this is an ongoing struggle. People who are working in this area are developing new ways all the time. And like I say, sort of 80% of it can be dealt with in a very cost effective way which leaves you 20% exposed, which is probably always going to be the case. What is being stolen from companies can be as serious as their future strategy, detail, you know, through details of their customer base, all that kind of intelligence that is so important to companies in this competitive environment. If a competitor can get hold of it then obviously that’s very damaging for a company. But we’re not talking about competitors within the UK, this is a worldwide problem and the most cyber attacks are coming from overseas.