Website hacking has continued to plague the world's business website, new research suggests.

Management agency Akamai published its report into the state of the internet, revealing SQL injection and cross-site scripting are the most popular methods of attach.

However, despite the risks, the research found many firms are failing to demand their IT support protect them from such assaults.

It asserted that large websites such as Amazon and Slashdot.org had both been out of action for periods of several hours.

Malcolm Rowe, Akamai's regional manager for northern Europe, said: "Some organisations are not installing patches and fixes to problems that have been known since 2001, which is staggering."

Recently, analysis published by Infonetics Research found there has been an increase in IT security investments.

The company asserted this is down to an increase in attacks forcing firms to invest.

A spokesman for the firm described the recent upturn in IT attacks against businesses as "staggering".

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.