Responses came from a wide variety of industries (with manufacturing accounting for 39 per cent and business services 22 per cent) and locations, with Hong Kong leading the way at 21 per cent, followed by Indonesia (17 per cent), the Philippines (16 per cent), Australia (12 per cent) and United States security directors with responsibility for the Asia-Pacific (12 per cent).

According to Pinkerton (Asia) managing director Warwick Stacey, denial-of-service attacks on Internet-based firms have forced companies to realise just how vulnerable they are to a virtual ambush.

'With more and more companies looking towards hi-tech ways to boost business, there is an increasing importance placed on IT [information technology] security,' Mr Stacey said.

'Many have a perception that 'this can never happen to me', but what we've seen in the past year is this can happen to anyone.'

May's attack of the 'I Love You' computer virus, which is believed to have originated in the Philippines and ground many firms' online operations to a halt, brought the dangers of hacking home to Asia.

But Mr Stacey believed many more businesses would have been hit this year by Internet breaches if it was not for the once much-feared and now much-maligned millennium bug, or Y2K.

'The benefit of Y2K was it made security managers recognise the importance of focusing on Internet security,' he said.

'Those that took Y2K seriously came up with solid contingency plans and may have implemented safeguards to protect from security breaches.'

Pinkerton's vice-president for Asia, Jeffrey Williams, said in the survey: 'This [Y2K] may have been the first time non-IT management were exposed to the broad scope of technology deployment throughout their companies and how its loss could be so critical to the organisation's effectiveness.'

So, it is no coincidence that another part of the survey, in which respondents were asked to rank their greatest security-management challenges, listed 'keeping up with advances in technology' as No 1.

Fair enough, but while most security managers can batten down the hatches against hackers with tightened encryption and new technology, how are they supposed to prepare for 'acts of God' such as an earthquake?

Severe earthquakes in the Philippines and Taiwan saw billions of dollars lost as businesses struggled to resume normal operations.

While the thought of an earthquake shaking Hong Kong to its foundations seems fanciful, the potential destruction of a severe typhoon cannot be underestimated.

'About 75 per cent of the respondents reported they had prepared crisis-management plans during the previous 12 months to counter these threats,' Mr Williams said.

'Earthquakes in Taiwan and the Philippines, coupled with violence in areas of Indonesia, insurgency incidents in the Philippines and tensions between [China] and Taiwan, highlight the ongoing need for current, well thought-out contingency planning.'

If cyberspace attacks and natural/political disasters all sound daunting, at least most security managers can get their heads around the next biggest perceived security threat - good, old-fashioned graft.

In fact, the high rankings of kickbacks (third), insurance fraud (fourth), intellectual property/piracy (equal sixth), employee selection/screening concerns (equal ninth), illegal sales commissions (equal ninth), general employee theft (11th) and embezzlement (12th) prove many security managers have enough to worry about within their own office.

The rise of insurance fraud has been linked to the Asian crisis.

'Insurance companies have lost millions of dollars in the region as firms and individuals suffering losses in the receding economic crisis tempted people to devise various creative schemes to defraud insurers,' Mr Williams said.

If there is one other thing the survey reveals, it is that Asian workers are quite a sedate bunch, when compared with their US counterparts.

Towards the bottom of the survey's rankings are organised crime, sexual harassment, terrorism, kidnapping/extortion, electronic eavesdropping and drugs/alcohol in the workplace.

At the very end of the list, in 27th place, is workplace violence, which has ranked as the No 1 concern in a similar Pinkerton survey in the US.

Cyber-hackers and earthquakes aside, thank heavens for small mercies.

Graphic: SECU01gwz