Creating Value

Information is an essential resource for all businesses today and is the key to growth and success. However, you need to ensure that the information held on your IT systems is secure.

The impact of a security breach may be far greater than you would expect. The loss of sensitive or critical information may not only affect your competitiveness and cashflow but also damage your reputation - something which may have taken you years to establish and which may be impossible to restore.

Information also needs to be protected if you share it with other organisations. For many businesses, the internet has replaced traditional paper-based ways of exchanging information. It can be sent and received faster, more frequently and in greater volume.

However, the internet brings its own security issues which businesses must consider. Some of the threats posed by hackers on the internet include:

• gaining access to sensitive data such as employee records, price lists, catalogues and valuable intellectual property, and then altering, destroying or copying them
• altering your website to damage your reputation or direct your customers to another site
• gaining access to financial information about your business, employees or your customers for the purposes of fraud