He's a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, sits on several government and White House security committees and has a presentation style reminiscent of Robin Williams in “Good Morning Vietnam.”

Meet “Big Bill” Hancock, advisor to presidents and the Spice Girls, father, grandfather, self- confessed security fanatic and head of security for Cable and Wireless worldwide.

If your company hasn't yet focused on IT security, the message from Dr. Hancock is clear: “Be afraid, be very afraid...”

Dr. Hancock's presentation at La Coquille on Thursday was sponsored by Cable & Wireless, QuoVadis and the Ministry of e-Commerce and Telecommunications. It was billed as a seminar on company security but despite the serious subject matter, he kept his audience in stitches with tales of computer hackers, worms and viruses. One particular hacker story involved a successful break in to the Spice Girls website which left all the girls with their ‘virtual' heads shaved..

More serious was the revelation that hackers are organising themselves into gangs and cyber terrorism is a growing phenomena. The dangers are real says Dr. Hancock. “The opportunity to create havoc comes at a very low cost... cyber terrorists do not have to have underground laboratories, the entry point is a pc.”

Even during this trip to Bermuda, he was able to ascertain that by plugging into free high speed internet access in his hotel, his laptop had been scanned thirty times by outside entities which have nothing to do with Bermuda. A situation that most of us have experienced from the growing amount of spam that we receive on our home computers.

According to Dr. Hancock, the job of protecting a company's systems and data will be complicated in the future by the use of lap tops, cell phones and even palm pilots. The emergence of third generation cell phones with large memories which may store credit card information, client telephone numbers and other sensitive information is already leading to companies needing to install fire walls on cell phones.

Threats via the internet now come in many forms and they are not just restricted to threats to company's system and data. Terrorist groups are using innocent websites to store encoded messages, paedophiles are using the internet for child pornography and criminals are using extortion techniques via e-mails.

A common example of internet extortion in Bermuda has been the Nigerian banking fraud, but recently Dr. Hancock came across a case where employees clicked on an e-mail about the Olympics in Greece and received a message which said “We have just downloaded child pornography to your computer. Unless you pay us $50 by credit card, we'll tell your management.” Several employees were so intimidated by this that they actually paid out the money.

As for how companies can protect themselves, Dr. Hancock says that the most important principle is “Security is not what you park in front of it, security is how you react.”

It is important to have a layered defence. Firewalls employed by companies to protect their computer systems from unwanted intrusions via the internet are just the beginning.

As head of security for the worldwide Cable & Wireless network, Dr. Hancock is responsible for far flung divisions all around the world (he commonly gets calls in the middle of the night from unidentified people in India about their firewalls).

He says that Cable & Wireless recently came under attack from a worm which attempted to disable the system. They had to act quickly and were busy for the next 24 hours ensuring that their service remained functional. A month later, the top level domain, (TLD) got hit with exactly the same kind of attack. Dr. Hancock concludes that Cable & Wireless was not the actual target of the earlier attack, but rather a practice run for the cyber terrorists who were planning an attack on the top level domain.

He said that companies should be particularly on their guard on weekends, which is when most hacking activity occurs. He comments that he has thought about setting up a website “freedatesfornerds.com” which might get the hackers out more at the week-end and away from their computers.

Dr. Hancock admits that that his preoccupation with security even extends to teaching his children self defence from an early age. It's an outlook that was vindicated when his seven year old son was the target of a failed kidnapping attempt in the US. Apparently the young Hancock dislocated all the fingers and broke the kneecap of his attacker. On which happy note we can reveal that there are several Tae Kwon Do academies listed in the classified section... and just in case you were considering relocating, perhaps Bermuda isn't so bad after all.