There has been no end of stories over recent years about the ability of companies and organisations to maintain their data security. Bad news always travels faster than good and we will only ever know about the instances where data security is breached rather than the majority of occasions when data is secure but the quest to achieve total security is ongoing.

At a I.T. professional interest forum focussed on data security a security expert from one of the worlds leading banks and a commercial supplier of data security outsourcing to India, provided scant confidence that this topic will ever go away or indeed be resolved.

The Banks security representative even admitted that they were fighting a losing battle and had no chance of providing a 100% secure environment. All they can do is to establish procedures and staff awareness to try and make security as tight as possible. Even then it's more than likely that a future breach will be inevitable.

The story was even worse from the supplier, who do not provide customers with any assurance against security breaches within their operation, they just do their best. Arguably just by outsourcing to a third party, especially in a country like India, which has such appalling poverty, that the temptation to make some extra money by selling the data makes the chances of security failure increase, many times over.

It was also my pleasure to chair Endeavour Events Security Summit in Brussels where the Head of the Belgium Police force in charge of Internet security, who specialises in all types of cyber crime detection, said that with the current financial crisis, the risk of data security is at its highest level for years. The temptation for criminal activity in detrimental financial conditions provides the environment for a mass increase. In this case the admission by the bank that they are always playing catch up is hardly encouraging and in fact extremely worrying. If a high quality bank is struggling what chance does everyone else have?

And if you would like to read the views of the panel from Dexia, Nordea, ABN AMRO and SIA-SSB Group on the closing debate "The Financial Crisis; How will this affect payment systems? " and my summary, click here to request a complimentary copy.