"Who is the responsible party? Is it up to the technical people to keep pushing new information upstairs, or is it the responsibility of the people upstairs to take far greater interest in the knowledge capital of the enterprise?" Answering his own question, Joscelyne said it is definitely in the nontechnical area where far greater interest needs to be taken.

"One of the problems we face is a clear enterprise goal. We find that most have good intentions, but in terms of turning them into a practical goal, the task is often set aside as something we need to do but do not intend to and this lack of urgency is a matter of concern."

As an example of the slow response rate to such matters, Joscelyne said that, in a move to clarify the framework around the December 2001 Privacy legislation, he contacted the Privacy Commission which said that organizations should take "reasonable steps to secure information and ensure privacy is maintained". The then Privacy Commissioner, Malcolm Crompton said as a basic minimum, companies should fully encrypt laptops that contains important data.

But it was late 2004, Joscelyne said, before the private sector began addressing this issue. In the public sector there are still thousands of government laptops that do not comply, he said.

"Our colleagues in the US and Europe express dismay at how slow Australia has been, and continues to be, in adopting what they believe are fair and reasonable security protections of data," Joscelyne said.