It does not seem that long ago that the major complaint was of IT directors rarely having a seat on the company board.

Technology is no longer an optional extra, was Computing’s oft-repeated refrain. IT decisions must not only be made at the highest level, but are an unavoidable element of every strategic consideration.

Thankfully, that particular drum no longer needs quite so much banging. The majority of IT directors are now chief information officers (CIOs), with a place in the boardroom.

Even the public sector has caught up, with the Whitehall CIO Council providing a much-needed forum for technology-enabled business strategy.

In fact, things have now moved along so far that even the CIO role is sometimes viewed as obsolete.

With major technology infrastructure upgrades completed, some big names ­ such as Boots and House of Fraser ­ have scrapped the CIO position altogether. The IT manager can run the systems, and the top-level strategy and business accountability has been absorbed into the wider role of the finance director.

In this context, Sumitomo Mitsui’s creation of a single post taking charge of all aspects of security is an interesting development.

For a bank that nearly lost £220m to a two-pronged heist, an integrated system to run physical and electronic security ­ that links door passes and CCTV with PC access profiles and network tracking ­ is a sensible move, the result of a lesson well-learned.

But, in a wider context, it is also the logical next step to accepting that there are no IT decisions, only business decisions. In such an environment, it makes little sense to treat buildings and filing cabinets differently from PCs and databases.

There will always be a need for technology experts. But what business still needs the most is the ability to see technology as a part of everyday life. Consumers are increasingly behaving that way, now business needs to catch up.

The doom-mongers are dusting off their sandwich boards.

Northern Rock is being propped up by the taxpayer. Oil is at $100 a barrel. And how long global economic stability will last is anybody’s guess. Put simply, say the alarmists, the end is nigh.

In such a light the (relatively) frugal Christmas spending of UK consumers looks like good sense ­ though the highest-ever spend at Sainsbury’s does suggest a drowning of sorrows instead.

But unlike the last major economic upset, when the dot com bubble burst, this time the technology sector is not at the eye of the storm. In fact, assuming the fallout from the US sub-prime mortgage fiasco turns out to be turbulence rather than a tempest, the IT industry has much to gain.

Last week, a CBI report on the financial services industry stated that technology investment plans are at their highest level since 1997, even as business volumes are falling at their fastest since 1991.

And alongside the almost uniformly gloomy Christmas trading figures from high-street retailers were uniformly impressive rises in online sales. Marks & Spencer might have been down 2.2 per cent overall, but its web sales were up by almost half.

Sceptics may say that e-commerce is starting from such a low base that huge rises are not as meaningful as they appear. But a trend is a trend, particularly when it is in the shadow of a looming recession.

Financial institutions are looking for IT-enabled efficiency to help them through a sticky patch. And consumers, keener than ever for a bargain, are increasingly finding it on the internet.

Confidence in technology ­ both as an entity and as a business proposition ­ took a battering at the end of the 1990s. Now is the time to reclaim lost ground.

Straitened economic conditions play to technology’s key selling points: speed, efficiency, lower overheads and so on.

So put away the sandwich board, stop rounding up the animals two-by-two, and get online and spend. Your economy needs you.

The last opportunity for mitigating the unintended consequences of incoming cyber crime laws has been squandered.

When the Police and Justice Act goes through in April, it will in all likelihood include clauses criminalising the distribution of hacking tools. And the Crown Prosecution Service guidance, which was designed to explain to the jittery ethical hacking industry how the updated law would avoid penalising a core part of their business, has signally failed to do so.

Pressure to address cyber crime is mounting. Electronic fraud alone is costing the UK more than £1bn per year and rising. And warnings from MI5 in December that the Chinese army is conducting wholesale cyber espionage against UK companies underline the scale of potential threats.

In such a context, there is no question that laws must be kept up to date. And it is a genuine challenge to balance the need for restrictions to be made at the level of principle, so as to remain relevant, without putting too much responsibility for interpretation on non-expert judges and juries.

But the proposals now sadly likely to take effect are unsatisfactory and unhelpful.

Not all the cyber crime-related aspects of the proposed legislation should be dropped – much-needed laws against denial of service attacks are also part of the package.

But the government should not allow its lack of technical understanding to tip the balance in the contest between right and wrong.

The ethical hacking industry has grown up specifically because it can be hard for businesses to assess the efficacy of IT security measures without expert testing. And by using widely available tools and sharing all relevant research, the industry keeps as up to date as the crooks.

By criminalising the distribution of online hacking tools, the government is putting the good guys at a major disadvantage. The Police and Justice Act plans may do more harm than good.