A 60-day trial of McAfee's Total Protection Software is to be pre-installed on commercial computers and notebooks provided by Hewlett Packard.

McAfee has said the deal is being implemented with immediate effect and is aimed at small business customers.

Todd Gebhart, senior vice-president and general manager at McAfee Consumer, Mobile and Small Business, suggested that the need for greater security against more complex internet-based threats is an increasing priority for smaller business customers.

Rob Montgomery, director of business development for the Attach business at HP, said: "Millions of HP small business customers worldwide ... will be protected out-of-the-box through the preloaded McAfee security application, which can be upgraded at the end of a trial period."

A recent survey conducted by the company suggested that many firms believe they are too small to be noticed by cybercriminals, SC Magazine reported.

However, Darrell Rodenbaugh, senior vice-president of the mid-market segment at McAfee, pointed out that no organisation, whatever the size, is immune to security risks.

New research from Connect found that, on average, it takes businesses that use backup tapes take 11.6 hours to retrieve and restore files. Connect is now recommending that SMEs switch to www.connect.co.uk/services/online_backup