To answer this question you have to look at some key trends over the past few years. Video conferencing has been around for 30 years. In the past 20 years, the quality has become acceptable and video conferencing has become a useful business tool for a very small number of large companies. But, deployment has never really crossed the chasm and gone mainstream. This is due to a number of factors.

The continual evolution of standards, formats and data networks have been a challenge for most companies to keep up with.

Once you start making intra-company video calls, the chances of hitting an incompatible network or incompatible equipment rises fast, resulting in major reliability issues and disappointed users. I see so many disused video conferencing terminals in the board rooms of companies around the world, and I always ask why? The answers are always the same. ".... the person that bought that has left, no one knows how to use it", "... it never worked properly" or "....we only use phone conferences now, because that always works."

So complexity, fast evolving standards, and large numbers of failed calls have been the bane of the video conferencing industry for many years. Those that have persisted have generated a lot of value but for many users it has all been too much. When you rely on technology and it doesn't work, you have a very short tolerance level.

So back to the question, should you invest in Telepresence now? Well of course video quality has now improved dramatically with the advent of HD video coupled with high speed networks. However, what has not changed is the challenge of incompatible standards, the interoperability between hardware suppliers, the need to schedule a dedicated room, the requirement for high levels of bandwidth and dedicated support from IT.

So if you believe that quality is the answer to universal acceptance - think again. Think of a mobile phone, think of noisy lines, dropped calls, and having to reconnect multiple times.

Has this been a draw back to the explosion in mobile audio calls? No of course not. We tolerate massive quality issues compared to using a fixed phone. We tolerate these issues because using a mobile phone is easy, convenient, it nearly always works and has become an essential communications tool. Video conferencing is not essential. It never will be, and users always take the path of convenience and least resistance.

By all means invest in your expensive video networks, but be aware that it will only serve a very small number of people in your organisation. The majority of your staff will continue to collaborate via a phone (audio) conference, with an integrated web conference solution allowing data sharing. It is really all they need.

You should make sure that you are getting your performance gains from the simple no brainers first. Once you get the collaboration working practices in place, add a bit of video by all means, but it's not the place to start.

Tim Duffy is executive chairman at MeetingZone

A recent Cabinet Office report estimated that cyber crime costs the UK economy £27bn a year, with £21bn of that figure borne by British businesses, while a cyber attack by one state on another should be considered an "act of war", according to Tony Blair's former top national security adviser.

Historically, an enemy looking to destabilise the economy would target government, infrastructure and manufacturing sites with bombs. Now, the enemy might look to create similar chaos and operational paralysis by taking down a vital trading system, compromising personal records, or disrupting a high profile B2C organisation as a show of strength. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2015 at least one G20 nation's critical infrastructure will be disrupted and damaged by online sabotage.

If significant targets such as banks and other financial institutions are attacked or dissuaded from operating within, for instance, the City of London, the impact on the UK will be significant - lost revenue for the banking industry, lost tax income for the Government, and lost confidence leading to lower future investment and the resulting impact on jobs and the population's general outlook.

With companies increasingly targeted for disruption rather than information theft, business is already on the frontline of today's cyber war. Companies need to change their security culture to deal with this new threat, because it's no longer just about safeguarding their own data assets - it's also about protecting the national and economic interest.

With the stakes raised, companies must address online security in three specific areas: physical - the measures to prevent attackers from accessing the facility where data is stored; digital - the software safeguards in place to protect applications and data; and human - the people with access to the systems and hardware. Only with all three bases covered can a company claim to be truly secure and to be ‘doing its bit' for the cyber war effort.

Of course, most companies can't be expected to build military-style security defences around their IT systems, which is why Gartner also predicts that, with 2011 set to be the year of the cloud, mass business migration to sophisticated and secure data centres will become inevitable. Businesses shouldn't have to go it alone in the face of the growing online threat - third party providers exist who can deliver the level of protection they need comprehensively and much more cost-effectively.

Technology has revolutionised the UK economy, opening up whole new industries that wouldn't otherwise exist, irrevocably altering existing business processes, and creating a whole new set of security risks. Yet our reliance on round-the-clock access to information makes cyber attacks the perfect weapon for those who wish to do us harm. Companies need to ask themselves: what price peace of mind during wartime?

Simon Neal is chief operating officer at The Bunker