There is no excuse for not having an effective IT security set up, one expert has said.

Computerweekly.com reports comments by Suleyman Anil, head of the Nato Computer Incident Response Capability Coordination Centre, who explained there was no reason for companies not to be up-to-date in terms of IT security.

Speaking to an e-crime conference he said: "I have little sympathy for IT managers who complain about attacks because affordable, deployable solutions are available."

However, he added that they needed to be employed properly and kept updated to provide an effective level of IT security.

The computer is "the perfect weapon" which is why Nato takes cyber-crime as seriously as missile defence, he concluded.

Last week, PandaLabs warned that hackers are testing viruses against a range of anti-virus software to make sure they can by-pass such packages before releasing them on to the internet.

It said this allowed them to judge how effective their creations might be.

According to a recent survey by Connect, the two biggest IT headaches for businesses were 'everyday hassles with IT' (37 per cent) and 'security concerns' (32 per cent) In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'.