Securing a wireless network should be a major concern of businesses in order to keep their sensitive documents safe, it has been suggested.

A spokesperson for the National Computing Centre (NCC) said that simple measures can be taken to provide a basic level of protection, although more complex systems may be advisable for especially mission-critical data.

"Generally there are very easy steps you can take to secure your wireless network and ensure it is protected but some people do seem to just take the product out of the box, install Wi-Fi and just think about security afterwards," the spokesperson said.

"The threats are ever evolving," he warned wireless network users, suggesting that anti-virus and anti-spam software should be kept up to date.

The NCC spokesman added that a recent survey by the IT body found that wired connections were more likely to be secure than wireless networks, which "is essentially like locking the front door but leaving the windows open".

Urging companies to address this situation he cautioned that "we are not talking about common or garden criminals here; we are talking about intelligent, technically focused people who know what they are looking for."