Perhaps it is a false sense of security or a lack of knowledge that leads only a quarter of businesses to spend more than 1% of their IT budget on security and to neglect advances in both attack and defence strategies. Whatever the cause, these figures from the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) are a cause for concern.

Even a large corporation like the BBC cannot afford to be complacent – it accidentally sent 10,000 of its Radio 4 listeners an e-mail virus along with a programme update recently. Known as the Sobig Worm, the virus threatened to disable listeners’ computers, despite the BBC’s strict anti-virus system and a generous IT security budget.