Your business information is very important to you because without it you may be unable to function. Organisations have been known to go out of business after IT system failures; and this is not simply post-9/11 scaremongering. There has always been the possibility of system, power, network and software failure, together with natural disaster, physical attack, viruses and staff misconduct. What you need to do is undertake an informed risk assessment and put in place measures to mitigate your potential losses.

Business leaders need to learn to curb their natural optimism and believe that efforts to ensure information (data) security is an investment benefit, not a cost that may safely be cut. Simply think of an important department in your organisation, that uses IT as a primary tool to conduct its business, and work out how much it would cost the company as a whole if they could not work at all for a day, two days, a week. Think not only of the cost in profit terms but also in customer and business-to-business relationships, cash flow, human effort and publicity. Then think of what you ought to invest in order to prevent that from happening.