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Accountancy Age is trailing a report by PWC saying that company board rooms do not have sufficient IT knowledge. They may be right, but in many ways this is not the problem. The problem is that board members are frightened to ask IT questions for fear of the answers or a belief that it is too technical. It's not, the role of a board member (particularly non-execs), is to ask questions and make sure they understand the answers.

The physicist Richard Feynman once said "If it can't be reduced it to freshman level. That means we don't really understand it.” Something that is too true of IT.

KMPG today issued a warning to companies about Data Protection.

'Transitional Relief’ exemption that applied to files created prior to the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) will come to an end in six months' time.

Organisations with large amounts of paper based records will struggle to comply with simple requests from members of the public who want to know who has access to their personal data, whether it is accurate, and gain confirmation that it is stored securely.

Interestingly, many companies seem to not have noticed this risk, increasing the danger of loss of reputation and possible fines.

Data Protection is one of those areas that are growing in importance. Companies have to pay attention to it, because the reputational damage can be very bad. Hopefully warnings from companies such as KPMG will help raise awareness.