Given that this week has seen yet another massive hack, cybercrime and cybersecurity are (or should!) be something that every company worries about and takes seriously enough to prevent damage to their business, reputation and customers.
The hack that is foremost in my mind at the moment is the Vtech hack: 6.4 million user details have been accessed. That's huge, and even overshadows the most recent TalkTalk hack.
What makes the Vtech hack even more outrageous is the sheer number of children's accounts which have been hacked and accessed - This includes photos taken by (and of) children, as well as the audio recordings that they have made.
This should make parents very worried. From reports that I've read, paedophiles don't just want to look at despicable child pornography - simple photographs of children are sufficient enough to satisfy their perverse needs.
That fact alone should make anyone think twice about putting photos of their kids up on Facebook for all to see, but when it's innocent children's snapshots that they have taken themselves, this hack seems even more sinister.
Vtech have understandably created a FAQ page (available here) which breaks down the numbers of accounts and type of accounts affected by country, and it makes shocking reading.
Nearly 2.9 million children's accounts have been accessed in the USA, and over 727,000 child accounts in the UK have also been accessed.
In comparison, over 2.2 million parent accounts have been compromised in the USA, with 560,487 parent accounts accessed in the UK.
Just what has been accessed and/or passed on to third parties is still to be discovered, but I would be incredibly worried if my children had been using Vtech's products.
When I was a child, my parents generally didn't encourage me to go for battery operated (or electronic) toys, as they typically didn't do very much, weren't particularly educational and they ate batteries. I loved Lego, anyway.
But, with electronic devices finding their way into every aspect of our lives, children increasingly want and expect a similar life to their parents - and this includes access to smartphone and tablet style devices.
During the Black Friday sale week, I Tweeted about a recent campaign by the NSPCC which shocked me and would certainly make me think twice before buying a cheap smartphone for any child.
The video is almost too much to take in, and it left my wife and I sitting in stunned silence after we saw it - We then both agreed that we would never give our kids a smartphone!
The NSPCC video is titled "I saw your willy", and if you haven't seen it, you should. You too, will think twice before letting your kids have a smartphone or tablet.
No amount of parental controls on your ISP or home broadband will stop determined or accidental use of anything connected to the internet, so you really do need to ask yourself "Is it ok for my children to have access to modern consumer electronics in this day and age?"
It's a very unpleasant world that we live in, and we should protect ourselves online - because companies might not be doing enough to protect us.
