THE recent ransomware attack on NHS computer systems hammered home the very real threat which cyber crime poses to our well-being. With IT systems frozen across the service, NHS bosses had no choice but to cancel operations and transfer patients awaiting treatment to hospitals which escaped the attack. It laid bare the extent to which the health service has been starved of the investment required to keep their systems up to date – and patients safe.

For companies such as Iomart, however, threats such as these are an opportunity.

Chief executive Angus MacSween said the cyber attack on the NHS underlined the case for companies and public sector organisations to use professional cloud hosting service firms, rather than seek to handle IT security themselves. Of course, Mr MacSween has a vested interest. But, certainly for small of medium-size businesses, you can see the logic.

As the Iomart boss noted, there are many boxes which companies have to tick to ensure their systems are fully secure. And the technology involved comes at cost. Faced with the choice of footing that bill, or turning to companies which can take care of it all for you, more and more firms would appear to be choosing the latter. It is not difficult to imagine that trend continuing as companies’ data security needs become ever more sophisticated.

This all plays into Iomart’s sweet-spot, but it is not the only factor in its favour. Mr MacSween said the cloud computing market continues to be very fragmented: there is no obvious, dominant player, meaning there is still plenty of growth to go for.