I spent lunchtime on Tuesday moderating a panel discussion organised by undergraduates at Sydney University. It was called "WikiLeaks and Julian Assange: secrecy, security and freedom of speech"; and no, this isn't going to be another column about either WikiLeaks or Mr Assange. At least, not directly.

Among the panellists was Professor Wendy Bacon of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney. She argued passionately that WikiLeaks has been doing what the established media has all too frequently failed to do in recent years: shone light into dark corners - in Kenya, in the Niger Delta, in London, and especially in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Washington. In almost all circumstances, she declared, transparency is in the public interest.

Another panellist, Tom Switzer, editor of The Spectator Australia, made the point that no government can function effectively unless its deliberations can be kept private, and that the most likely result of WikiLeaks' operations is that governments - especially the U.S. government - will guard their secrets even more closely.

Like a good chairman (or a practised fence-sitter) I found myself agreeing with both of them. But afterwards I fell to thinking about how well the places that I've worked could operate if everything we did was liable to be made public.

Take a 4 Corners investigation, for example. Normally, a team of at least three people is involved - a reporter, a producer and a researcher. Each of them is likely to conduct "off the record" conversations with a dozens or more people, in the process of establishing what the "truth" is likely to be, what the "story" should be (a related, but rather different, issue), and who might be prepared to say what on camera.

Unless the source is particularly sensitive, all these conversations will be summarised in file notes and placed in a secure folder on the 4 Corners server so that the other members of the team (and, in theory at least, only a couple of others) can read them. Most of these records would be deleted shortly after the program went to air. But if they were ever made public, they could be highly compromising for the sources.

In addition, emails fly backwards and forwards within the team, all day, every day. Some will be unflattering. "Spoke to so-and-so. Not much to say but takes forever to say it. Boring and full of himself." "Finally reached whatshername. Mad as a cut snake. Forget her." And so on.

Every workplace is probably the same. Of course we know that we shouldn't write emails like this, because emails are not secure, and if someone penetrated our email accounts and sprayed them over the internet, it would be acutely embarrassing.

That is precisely what happened recently, to its utter mortification, and to the unbridled delight of much of the blogosphere, to an American company called HBGary Federal. It specialises in selling internet security software and advice to corporate clients - among them the Bank of America and the US federal government.

At the beginning of February, HBGary Federal's CEO, a gent called Aaron Barr, unwisely boasted that he had unmasked some of the leaders of the group called Anonymous, which organised cyber-attacks on financial services companies like Mastercard and Visa after they refused to channel donations to WikiLeaks.

Before Mr Barr could make the names public, however, he himself was humiliated. Anonymous's hackers penetrated the company's computer networks and its website, as well as his personal email and Twitter accounts. Tens of thousands of confidential emails were spread across the internet. A terabyte of stored back-up data was unceremoniously deleted.

There are plenty of accounts of the incident - here and here, for example. What I found most fascinating is this one, which details exactly how Anonymous managed to penetrate the defences of a company that ought to know every trick in the hackers' book.

It turns out that, despite the fact that it made its living as a consultant on internet security, HBGary Federal's systems weren't very secure at all. On top of that, its CEO and Chief Operating Officer were sloppy.

Their passwords were childishly simple - six lower case characters and a couple of numbers (oh dear, sounds like mine). They used the same password, or variations of it, for multiple functions - to access the company's website as well as their email, Twitter accounts and so on (oh dear, so do I).

Anonymous were able to crack both these passwords, and through them to gain access to the email account of the company's owner.

Using that account, they emailed HBGary Federal's head of security, who let them in through the company firewall and supplied a crucial password so that they could mess with the root operating system. (Of course, the security head thought he was dealing with his boss. If Mark Scott emailed the ABC's IT department and asked for a password, would they dish it out? Surely not ...)

The problem is, of course, that good internet security is a pain in the proverbial. I mean, who can remember long complex passwords, especially if you have to maintain dozens of them? No one. So what do you do? Write them down. Where? Well, somewhere on your computer so you can access them when you need them. Uh oh.

Fortunately most of us aren't likely to find ourselves the target of Anonymous attacks. And maybe the ABC's defences are more robust that HBGary's, though I wouldn't want to bet on it. What about yours, or your employer's?

In any case, I do try to make sure, most of the time, that my emails wouldn't embarrass me or anyone else, and that genuinely confidential stuff isn't on the Media Watch server. (Except that occasionally ... oh dear, I sent a very indiscreet email just a few minutes ago. What was I thinking?)

We all have jobs to do. Doing them requires speed, and openness between team members. And effectiveness demands the presumption that only team members are going to see your emails and documents and (if your team happens to be the US State Department) NOFORN cables.

I'm sure that Tom Switzer is right when he predicts that one result of the WikiLeaks scoop will be that US State Department cables are much more heavily guarded, and circulated to a smaller group of people; and that will result in a greater chance that the right hand of the colossal US government body corporate won't know what the left hand is doing.

And that, as I wrote some weeks ago, may well be precisely the effect that Julian Assange has wanted all along. As he wrote in 2006:

"The more secretive ... an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline..."

HBGary Federal is suffering from much more than cognitive decline. It has been exposed as incompetent in the very field in which it claimed superior expertise. On Monday, Aaron Barr announced his resignation. The company's future looks anything but rosy.

But how would you and/or your employer fare, if Anonymous penetrated your computer firewalls - or a colleague decided to leak everything on your server to WikiLeaks? How well would you tolerate the light of transparency?

Jonathan Holmes is the host of ABC's Media Watch.