Many of the companies exhibiting at this year’s Internet World hold one thing closer to their heart than anything else, customer data. Nowadays multi-million pound businesses seem to spring up out of nowhere, based solely on the value of their customer’s data and how much this is worth to advertisers. Facebook, for example, may be founded on an interesting idea and built on some pretty clever technology, but the true value of the site lies squarely with the millions of people signed up to the site.

Online marketing companies know this to be true, the digital age brings countless opportunities to provide targeted marketing to fragmented communities. The ad-funded model is founded on user data, whether it be behavioural or personal, so the question needs to be asked, how can companies ensure their golden egg is protected?

Before this question is answered it is important to point out who this data is being protected from. As surely as banks breed robbers and expensive cars inspire car-thieves, the proliferation of the value of personal data has brought about a growth in cybercrime. It is now depressingly simple to buy datafiles full of personal details and even bank details from an anonymous contact on ICQ, a largely unregulated marketplace for personal data in cyberspace.

Whilst this is obviously the sharp end of such criminal activity, data protection is often seen by most companies as something which is boring and ultimately someone else’s job. In its ‘8 commandments’ The Data Protection Act holds the organisation holding the data responsible for ensuring the safety of data, specifically citing the importance of watertight technical systems. This however is not always the case and many IT systems are not adequately protected.

There are essentially two main risks to be mitigated when it comes to protection of electronically stored data, firstly the aforementioned danger of malicious incursion and secondly the frequently under-estimated human error factor. The security of IT systems is something companies take care of by ensuring a significant technology budget commitment. By using approved technologies, such as firewalls, encryption and protection of traffic between client and user systems, malicious attempts to hack IT systems can be detected before they have the chance to do any serious damage.

The human error factor is one that is never taken seriously enough, largely because this element is generally taken for granted. Things like ensuring password access control standards are as high as possible are very important – the most up-to-date firewalls are useless if passwords are written down or given out to all and sundry. Device management is also something which needs to be considered. Laptops, PDAs and other mobile devices are stacked full of sensitive data which is instantly exposed if they are lost or stolen. Being able to kill these devices remotely, or have some kind biometric entry system, is the only way to ensure the data contained is kept safe.

Data should be sacrosanct to any company operating in the online space. Operating in an environment founded entirely on data means companies must protect this, their most valuable of all asset, above all else.

James Drake-Brockman, Internet World