While the House of Lords report discussed elsewhere in this edition focussed on Personal Internet security, there is a broad swathe of business activity which falls outside its scope.

Large IT companies are no less vulnerable to the vagaries of Internet-borne attack, but the nature of the target is sufficiently different to merit a separate analysis and an alternative approach.

As recent successful high-profile attacks on large company IT systems will confirm, companies and their data – customer data in particular - now need ever higher levels of protection if a PR and financial disaster is to be avoided. .