Last time In Business visited Paul Davie and Dr Steve Moyle they had just moved into a small office at the Oxford Innovation Centre.

Wide-eyed and enthusiastic, they were the latest spin-out from Oxford University to enter the cut and thrust of commercial life armed, as Mr Davie said, with just a bright idea and a couple of laptops.

That was in late 2004. Now, little more than four years later, Secerno, as the company has come to be known, can boast 70 staff based in New York and Dubai, as well as Oxford, where it now occupies offices in Seacourt Tower.

The idea, it seems, has come to fruition big time, although Mr Davie’s feet are still firmly rooted to the floor.

It focuses on software which protects data stored in the databases of companies, large public sector organisations and Government departments from being copied, corrupted or otherwise interfered with by uninvited guests.

A good idea — but just why has it been so successful?

Mr Davie, 50, said: “It has been a question of timing. We have great technology that hit the market at just the right point, because stealing data has become a massive criminal industry.

“The FBI estimates that data theft is a bigger criminal industry than the drugs trade.”

The technology, known as DataWall, allows the user to detect if someone is using a company database in an ‘unusual’ way, for example, if payroll records are being accessed at 3am.

Mr Davie illustrates the point further with the case of TJX, parent company of clothing chain TK Maxx, which had its system hacked into about a year ago when tens of millions of customer credit card records were lost.

The standard cost for such information is about $20 a card, so ten million cards can be worth a fortune.

Then there is the case of hackers breaking into the Worldpay online payment company database. Within the hour, almost £5m had been stolen from cash machines.

Mr Davie added: “The old method of putting in a company firewall no longer works in business. Our technology fits in front of the database, monitors activity and allows you to stop it.”

Unlike conventional IT security, which is purely reactive, DataWall adapts to the system it is protecting, learning what is normal activity and what is not. Mr Davie says attacks on databases will always be new and so cannot be insured against with conventional systems.

But is it foolproof? Mr Davie is nervous about second-guessing ingenious hackers, but there have been no complaints so far.

The value of the system is obvious when it comes to the likes of Government departments and vast organisations such as the NHS.

Mr Davie said: “There are constant losses of data. For example, in the NHS a hacker might access the medical records of a particular celebrity, or at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. The same could happen with tax records.”

The Skipton Building Society is a major customer for Secerno with the technology being used to protect its online mortgage application system, although the identity of many others is kept from public view — for obvious security reasons.

Deals have been struck with major security firms such as Alcatel and Macafee, which resell DataWall as part of a package, thereby reaching a wide, ready-made customer base.

Mr Davie originally set the company up with Dr Moyle, 43, who was based in the computer laboratory of Oxford University.

He had been involved with spin-outs before, most notably Oxford Molecular, under Graham Richards, which went on to be worth £450m, and the university put the duo together in the belief that Dr Moyle might be on to something.

“We got together and decided his technology was unique and valuable and we received start-up funding from the Oxford Trust. Further venture capital cash came in 2005, and the company grew from there.”

Now the company has three British venture capital backers and has just agreed £8m of funding from UK investors Amadeus Capital.

“I think we are just scratching the surface as Britain is becoming a database nation. The more databases there are, the more security is important.”

Mr Davie added: “We are very lucky to be in Oxford because of the network of support to help technology businesses like ours get off the ground.

“It is very satisfying to get Oxford technology established. Secerno is very much an Oxford success story.”