Security: The Board washes its hands - again

Today's security statistics from the UK government has all the ingredients of a classic survey.

Most of the company bosses surveyed said security was their top priority. Sounds about right, after all more and more corporate computers are now connected to the internet which makes them more vulnerable than ever before.

That's a given. But there's more to the survey.

Only a quarter of these same companies have a decent-enough security policy in place to cope with potential security problems such as viruses, hackers and other cyber pests.

The cost of fixing a system after an attack is rising too. The survey put an average rough figure around the £500,000 mark for damage repair after an attack.

The figures don't quite add up - it's understood security protection is imperative but many companies are failing to put their money where their mouth is.

silicon.com writes news stories about security breaches everyday and there's enough information available on the internet to fill many libraries on how to protect your company's most valuable assets - its data.

So why then are 75 per cent of UK companies still lagging behind when it comes to security?

The survey was carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers and its explanation for this inconsistency is because most senior business managers ultimately don't understand or even care about IT security. Most business people do not see the immediate ROI on security spending so therefore wash their hands of it.

Do we really need a massive hack attack to take place and cripple the nation's infrastructure before the Board starts to pay attention to the stuff that matters? Let's hope not.

Let's show them the statistics from the FBI who only last week told us hack attacks are to rise massively. Let's show them the number of customers lost while trying to bring a defaced website back online.

Let's show them the many studies about damage of internal data thefts - and let's hope they do something about it, before it's too late.