Internal IT security threats are causing more concern to company bosses than security issues from outside, according to new research.

A survey by Secure Computing Corporation of 103 IT directors shows that 80 per cent consider insider threats such as unintentional data leakage or deliberate theft to be a priority.

Some 37 per cent of respondents state that they have experienced data leaks of sensitive information in the past year, according to a report on sourcewire.com.

Kieran Lees, regional sales director for the UK, Ireland, South Africa and Israel at Secure Computing, comments: "The insider threat and data leakage rivaling traditional external threats among IT directors' primary concerns."

Email is regarded as the biggest security risk to organisations, with VoIP second and browser threats related to surfing the web coming third.

In recent news, British Telecom has denied that its home hub system is an IT security hazard because it is an open gateway for hackers, according to a report on technews.co.uk.

More than half of small businesses (53%) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support, London based Connect conducted the research in 2007.