But says Hugh Njemanze, co-founder and chief technology officer of ArcSight, the US-headquartered security management company, many businesses at the enterprise end of the market and especially where data needs to be kept confidential, such as healthcare, actively shy away from data pooling.

"Each appliance for our clients operates as an island. Sure, we'd like to use the data from the appliance to share threat information between our clients, but that's not something they will go for", he said.

"Some of our clients are in the government agency sector, and there's no cooperation from them when it comes to data sharing", he added.

Speaking with Infosecurity at the Infosecurity Europe event in London this week, Njemanze said that it may be possible to pool data between a select number of clients who are looking for this kind of value-added service at some stage in the future.

ArcSight, he says, may introduce this technology about 12 to 18 months down the line, but it will take a lot of planning and discussion with clients because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The IT security industry veteran also has some interesting views on the apparent stampede among major businesses to move their IT into the cloud, largely owing to the economic imperative.

The cloud, he says, has clear economic advantages, but, just like the difference between buying or renting a home, there are disadvantages as well.

"We're not moving into the cloud with our security offerings at the moment, but we are watching what is happening in the market. We're erring on the side of caution", he said.