· Not many businesspeople know this, but their printers contain hard disks. Manufacturer Sharp has been researching the amount of corporate ignorance surrounding the technology and realised that knowledge was low - 46 per cent of companies had no idea any data was held in the device, and had therefore taken no precautions to safeguard it. Product marketing manager Stephen Roberts confirms there are security risks associated with any hard disk and that Sharp is one of the two companies to have done anything active about implementing security - something the company attends to by adhering to standards intended for the military.

· Elsewhere in this issue we cover security and virus attacks. These should be taken seriously anyway, but particularly in the light of research from McAfee that suggests 70% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have had a computer virus and lost money as a result. The average loss amounted to £843 per company, amounting to £2.1bn overall for British business. Just under 35% of the SMEs questioned - all members of the Federation of Small Businesses - believed a virus wouldn't do any serious harm. Equally seriously for businesses was the fact that 58% of companies wouldn't open an email from someone who had previously given them a virus.

· Also on the research front, Orange has joined up with Mori and Real Business magazine to ascertain what small businesses are doing with their technology. Among the research's findings was that 49% said they did not use a word processor package; 54% said they did not have a software licensing package and bought individual software licences for every purchase instead; two thirds of small businesses lacked both the time and resources to find the most suitable services for them and made buying decisions on the hoof; and perhaps most interestingly 50% of respondents used only some of the services for which they paid, the main reason being that they weren't able to communicate the services they had bought to all staff.

· Two new accounts packages have been released as challengers in the market for very small business bookkeeping. Dosh Software has come out with the latest version of its Cashbook product, which comes in at £59 including VAT, according to the company's website. People with more limited resources might like to have a look at Omni, a South African-developed product which weighs in at a mighty £9.99; this is for the basic version and extra features can be added and activated for around £2.50 each, depending on what you want the system to do. Further details can be found at www.omniaccounts.com.

· Readers whose business is on the medium side of small to medium will be interested to hear that Microsoft is aware that they need their security addressed - so it has put a free security toolkit on the net for download. Available at Microsoft security, it includes a lot of information, including white papers and case studies, and a lot of evaluation software, which will, of course, include an element of sales pitch. The information and examples of good practice should be well worth having, though.

· Sussex-based Early Warning is aiming to help traders who accept credit card payments by launching its web-based database of established frauds. The idea is that you log on and compare orders to previous instances of fraud and become better alerted to any risks to your business. The company held the service under wraps for a few weeks and signed up a few large customers. It claims that as a result it had already saved £300,000 worth of fraudulent credit card transactions before its official launch.

· Proxim has launched a product for generous businesses wanting to share their wireless internet connections with passers-by and visitors. Called the AP2500, it combines Proxim's hardware with software to allow anyone with a WiFi compatible device to share the bandwidth in the host building. Initially this may seem more philanthropic than businesslike, but any executives and traders who have visited client premises for any length of time and have had to rely on their mobile phones for email communication (or simply go without) are sure to welcome the move.

· The police are being given more powers to combat software theft. In future police forces will be allowed to search and seize unlicensed software, following amendments to the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act which came into effect on 20 November. The proliferation of CD-writers is understood to have made the problem of software piracy considerably worse, and the software industry is suffering a loss of revenue as a result.