Businesses need to establish a "very definite policy" on how staff may use the internet at work, an industry expert has said.

A clear set of guidelines would be beneficial in the event of any dispute with an employee, the news editor of Web-User magazine Ben Camm-Jones stated.

Every IT manager is concerned about employees wasting time by using company IT services to access the internet, he added.

Mr Camm-Jones said businesses not only need to establish a clear policy but should also "make it very clear to all employees what that policy is".

He stressed most problems in this area "can be circumvented with a very clearly-established IT policy".

Any company bosses concerned that their computer networks could be left open to security threats may have noted an experiment conducted by McAfee in July, which found the average person who surfed the net without any security protection received 70 spam emails per day.

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.