Business owners will have to deal with a new form of phishing in the near future, it has been claimed.

ITPro.co.uk research by MarkMonitor which indicated that "vishing" is set to become an increasing IT security threat for firms and individuals.

"Vishing" is the practise of using voice over internet protocol (VoIP) communication techniques to try and obtain sensitive data from a target.

Speaking to the website Charlie Abrahams, director of the firm, said: "There are many different forms of 'vishing', but fundamentally it's just a different form of delivering a [phishing attack]."

One of the ways in which this can be done is by using an automated phone call which attempts to get an individual to disclose bank or credit card details, the study found.

However, it is not all band news with ITPro saying that Mr Abrahams believes that scammers are looking at new techniques as people are increasingly aware of other IT security threats.

Last week Greg Day of McAfee warned that firms that used the internet to conduct financial transactions need to take extra IT security precautions.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent).