Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik is currently in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. During his time in Davos, Michael has the opportunity to speak with many business leaders and politicians about the important subject of Internet privacy and online reputation.

In a special column for Reuters, Michael Fertik shares some of his insights the evolution of online security and privacy and what Davos attendees are doing to help address the growing cybersecurity threats in the world.

Check out an excerpt of Michael’s column below:

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has named cybersecurity one of the top five risks in the world. In its Global Risks 2011 report, the WEF’s Risk Response Network nominated cybersecurity alongside planetary risks posed by demography, resource scarcity, trepidation about globalization, and, of course, WMDs. This is heady stuff. Cybersecurity has officially gone prime time. This week in Davos, I’ll be moderating and contributing to panel sessions on this topic.

The timing could not be more ripe. Right now we are witnessing the convergence of multiple seismic risks to data integrity. Social networks capture and mine ever larger amounts of data about humans and companies, opting users into increasingly invasive data collection with little or no notice. Apps operating on social networks and smartphones continually pull data streams about friends, families, personal connections, contacts, geo-location, behavior, preferences, tastes, and health habits — even when these data streams are unrelated to the stated purpose of the applications.

We’ve seen search sites mine public data, semi-public data, purchased information that was supposedly private, and even scraped or stolen data, and aggregate them together for sale and resale on the open web, claiming cover of current law. To date, the Internet economy has been nearly perfectly stacked against individuals’ control over their data. The proliferation of deep digital information about every individual on earth, along with the correlated explosion of its easy and unwitting accessibility by third parties, poses a “personal WikiLeaks” threat to each of us.

Check out Reuters for Michael’s full column. For more information from Davos, check out these three articles and follow along with Michael Fertik on Twitter.