New technologies are putting UK companies at a high risk of a security breach, says the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).

Businesses who use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology and also instant messaging are making themselves more vulnerable to infiltration.

Since their last survey in 2006 the number of companies who have implemented VoIP has doubled, which in turn doubles the risk of security breaches.

Chris Potter, from PricewaterhouseCoopers which authored the report, says: "The more avenues there are into organisation, the more likely they are to be attacked, which emphasises the importance of identifying all the risks."

It is estimated that half of all companies using instant messaging do not have security controls in place.

In related news, the BERR claims that while information security market practices in Britain led to the international adoption of BS 7799, in reality, IT services and IT security are viewed as technical matters rather than mainstream business issues.

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)