Editor's Blog: Banking on a hard time over security

There have been some interesting stories knocking about on the subject of security, just recently.

There was talk about Norwich Union at the weekend and the operations it uses in India. (Somewhat overblown by the mainstream media, along the lines of most 'company X ditches India' stories, which are often a bit more complicated than that.)

Then this morning we heard about the case of the Halifax parting company with some mortgage and customer details, through the theft of printouts.

I'm guessing that this afternoon, which sees us sending a staffer to the e-Crime Congress in London, will see a lot more such talk.

A simple truth strikes me about these instances. There might be some in these companies feeling unfairly picked on but there's one basic point to remember: financial services institutions trade in trust.

In an era where supermarkets and others can offer loans, insurance and more, we must remember that banks' relationship with their customers comes from a history of being a safe place for our money. Today that trust extends to our ID, our house deeds, our wills and more.

It only makes sense that a Halifax, an NU or a Nationwide (in a prominent incident recently) be held to high standards. Without those high standards they lose a major part of their reason for existing.

What's SOA?

Read all about service-oriented architecture in our Cheat Sheet.

In completely unrelated news, I'd like to say how pleased I am to see the return of our CIO Essentials features on the website. As well as our weekly newsletter that sums up some of our best content from columnists as well as in-house analysis and the like, we from time to time look to an IT boss to talk over what caught their eye in the past seven days.

This week Peter Birley from law firm Browne Jacobson takes on everything from extreme weather threats to how IT departments get the rest of the organisation to understand SOA - even if there isn't a consensus in IT first. Check it out here.