Richard Nethercott: Security is a very tangled web

Cyber-crime is no longer the threat of a single malicious individual; it is big business with organised attacks focussed primarily on commercial gain. Targets are institutions which have intellectual property or conduct financial transactions, as well as those that provide services underpinning the national infrastructure, be they government departments or the finance sector.

Recent high profile cases, such as Sony and Wikileaks, have underlined that there is no room for complacency.

IT security has parallels with security in the physical world; if someone really wants to break in, they will, given enough time, effort and resources. There is no 100 per cent secure system. It's about making access so difficult that the costs outweigh the reward. It's about managing the risk, balancing the cost of protection with the value of that which is protected and probability of loss.

Identity related information remains a major target as such details sell at a premium on the black market where they can be uesd for fraud and exploitation activities. Privacy laws the world over are being tested as all information becomes digital and thus accessible and communicable quickly.

Organisations' defences are improving to cope with these attacks. It becomes evolutionary – threats mutate and seek weakness and defences adapt to deal with new found threats.

The trend for flexible working using either personal laptops and smartphones has widened the estate to be protected and monitored outside the old-style corporate security fortress. Cloud computing, using virtual server space, brings many security questions but can be more secure than traditional physical servers for small and medium-sized organisations.

The threats will continue for the foreseeable future and are likely to become more sophisticated as technology advances. Taking these threats seriously is essential to ensure Scotland is recognised as a safe place to do business by investors and customers.

• Richard Nethercott works in Logica's global security practice