Small firms dedicate a larger proportion of their technology budget to IT security than their larger counterparts, a new survey has found.

Research by analysts Forrester found that smaller firms dedicate an average of around nine per cent of their IT budget to IT security, whereas large companies spent an average of seven per cent on the issue.

However, the study also found that larger firms spend more on IT staffing than their smaller equivalents.

The survey drew responses from 2,000 IT security decision makers for firms across Europe and North America.

It also found that the biggest three challenges facing IT security teams are lack of budget, lack of in-house skill and excessive workload, something which may lead companies to consider IT outsourcing.

Earlier this month Computerweekly.com reported comments by Suleyman Anil, head of the Nato Computer Incident Response Capability Coordination Centre who said there is no excuse for firms not to have up-to-date IT security measures in place.

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'.