if you’re better governed you become more efficient. Secondly, that once you’re better governed and you’ve got all of those systems into place, that you are enjoying stronger stakeholder support for what you’re seeking to achieve, and that’s very important. But that said, we are acknowledged globally as one of the leaders, one of the proponents of good practice, governance. And that’s good feedback for us because we want to know that we are getting somewhere. However we still continue to encounter organisational collapse. We still continue to encounter cases of value destruction. And that tells us that we can’t be complacent about the systems we are putting into place. But certainly as far as the financial sector is concerned, despite the fact that we’ve had a double recession and people even talking about a third recession after that, most of our corporate world have survived intact and continues to perform well. And we will put that down to the fact that our companies are well run and well governed.

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.

Martha Lane Fox on the connected economy.

According to Martha Lane Fox, UK Digital Champion, the connected economy brings new and cost-effective solutions to business in the UK. The connected economy is characterised by the use of digital technologies like social media, smart phones or cloud computing to unlock greater efficiency and cost savings. Although the UK has seen difficulty in key sectors like retail, the connected economy or digital economy has been booming. The UK's £121Bn internet economy is the largest of any G20 country "I certainly think that there are more ways to be more connected into the things that are important because of technology, than perhaps there were in the last economic downturn. So you know I believe very deeply that the opportunity that digital technologies afford you will give you more robust ability to survive. So for example, you know, how would it have been possible to just get out there and select some customers and talk to them in the past as easily as it can be now through a Facebook group or through a LinkedIn group or through a Twitter profile? You know, there are so many ways that you can connect into your customer base, stay close to it. But also though, you know, the opportunity to save money by using digital technologies more smartly, whether it’s with cloud computing through to how you actually talk to your employees, suppliers, whatever the thing might be. So both on there and outside your business and internally, I think that technology can help really ride the wave." According to Inside Finance TV experts like Graeme Codrington, the connected economy is more than just marketing. It's a fundamental change to the way businesses will operate.

Guy Rigby: "You get a total variation of businesses.  I mean one of my favourites last year that we put forward for inclusion in the top 10 was a company called Rock Choir, which if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a marvellous social business effectively where people go off every week and sing together.  And it’s for profit, so it’s a very, very social thing.  I mean I have to say my wife goes and she comes back in such a fantastic mood, I wish she could go every night to be honest.  But no, it’s a really, really fantastic evening. And they’ve built a real business around this.  So this is a community thing, it happens in lots of different cities around the UK, well not even cities, towns, villages etc.  And I believe that they actually culminate with sort of concerts at the O2 and things like that. So everyone getting together, have a great singsong.  And they do rock music, you know, ELO, stuff like that, really good.  So Rock Choir was a business, we had a big hosting company like, you know, companies like ... I’m not going to name names in that area, but they’re ... we had a couple of bathroom companies that were basically selling online.  So technology platforms with Facebook pages, suddenly turning over 20 million a year, amazing how these things are springing up.  So a lot of sort of businesses that are becoming technology enabled and using the internet to grow, and leaving effectively, leaving those whole high street players behind.  We’ve seen it happen haven’t we?"