The number of people in the UK using online banking services has increased by more than 500 per cent over the past seven years, according to new research.

Over half of internet users now use the internet to do their banking, figures from the UK payments association Apacs suggest.

It also found phishing attacks aimed at online banking customers have increased significantly in the last year.

However, it has reported an annual decrease in fraud - with phishing attacks on the rise perhaps because banks' sites are so secure.

Director of communications at Apacs Sandra Quinn advised consumers they should "only use a fully-protected PC with regularly updated antivirus software and a firewall installed and switched on".

She also reminded online banking customers to be wary of any unsolicited emails which claim to be from their banks.

Earlier this month, ITPro reported on research conducted by IBM and Google which suggested that almost half of the world's internet users have browsers which are either old or unpatched, potentially leaving them open to security threats.

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.