Broadband funding could be fed into business security

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A leading security authority has said that businesses need to take advantage of government funding in areas such as broadband, to improve security during times of tightening budgets.

Nick Coleman, co-founder of The Technology Den and former independent reviewer of government security, said that there was “huge stimulus money” from the public sector, which businesses needed to position themselves for.

In last week’s budget, billions of pounds were earmarked for the communication sector, businesses and emerging technology.

Coleman, who was speaking at Infosecurity 2009, also said that businesses would have to change some of the ways they approached security, as the money was simply not there anymore do things like they used to.

He said: “The next economic cycle is going to be very different, and we are going to have to think about doing things in very different ways.

“With very little cost, and much more efficiency in terms of our time and the way we do business.”

He said that security was going to continue to be a big focus, and criminals would target companies that were cutting budgets on research and development to perpetrate crime.

Jeremy Garside, head of technology for the London Symphony Orchestra, said that his own organisation needed to tread carefully when it came to budgeting to defend against threats.

He said: “In terms of the recession, we’re going to be pretty stationary in terms of what we spend and picky on what we choose to spend on."

Garside said that he had to re-examine the relationships that he had with his clients and suppliers.

“A classic problem when you’ve got a lot of different suppliers is if one of them goes bust.

“These are the sorts of risks I worry about. If our supplier goes bust and they have £100,000 worth of disks in stock, we have to get them back."

He said he was looking for the security sector to be creative with businesses like his own, such as for example calling them up and cross selling, or selling consultancy services in.

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