IT DOESN’T seem all that long ago when the word “infotech” started appearing on school and college timetables and elsewhere.

Information technology had arrived and a lot of people had a lot of catching up to do – including, truth be told, those responsible for drawing up our laws and passing them.

To be fair to our legislators, the scale and complexity of what has followed those early lessons has been hard to absorb. There is simply so much information and technology out there now.

Where do we begin to seek a clear, fair and sustainable way of policing both the use and provision of information technology?

Ours is not currently a government with a good track record in the delivery of high- end, high-cost IT systems. Barely a month passes without a report from the National Audit Office being super-critical of some Whitehall-sponsored IT scheme or other.

As well as the technical and financial glitches, there have been numerous instances where the civil liberties lobby has aired its concerns. The latest contribution to these debates comes from the head of the US National Security Agency, Lt Gen Keith Alexander.

He also heads the Pentagon’s new Cyber Command, and is said to have an enviable number of direct lines to people who really matter.

So, when he speaks in public, it’s time to take notice. His latest observation is that America needs a “digital warfare force”. He adds that his employers really should be thinking about reorganising their “offensive” and “defensive cyber operations”.

Lt Gen Alexander states that, in the last six months alone, the US Government has spent more than $100m responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks.

That amounts to more than renewing an annual subscription to anti-virus software.

But the scale of the problem – and potential threat – is huge.

Other US sources recently reported suspicions that the Chinese were armed with knowledge and sophisticated techniques allowing them to attack American energy distribution networks.

It’s almost a decade since the Millennium Bug failed to strike.

Networks and the actions performed across them have grown enormously. And so surely must their potential as targets for attack?

Governments have their responsibilities for IT security – and so, too, do businesses.

MATT JOHNSON is chairman of Mando Group