Company websites and data networks could potentially be at risk as domain name system (DNS) server security is lax, according to a new study.

Over 80 million DNS servers were surveyed by Infoblox and the Measurement Factory, with a significant percentage found to display vulnerabilities to hackers.

Some 31 per cent found to offer a loophole for denial of service attacks, while half of the web-facing DNS servers studied still allowed recursive queries, which leave them open to malicious processes including pharming.

Cricket Liu, vice president of architecture at Infoblox, called for security systems to be kept up to date in order that protections are as watertight as possible.

"Generally speaking, within a large organisation, one or two people know about DNS," he said.

"Those people who are entrust with that responsibility need to keep up."