A lack of trust in the users of security products in a company will cause more problems than benefits, a security adviser has warned.

In an interview with Techtarget, Cisco's Christopher Burgess said that data loss prevention (DLP) could bring about a breakdown in communication if such initiatives removed trust between IT support officials and end users.

As a result, he added, no communication would create a "vacuum" and cause many new ideas to lose their focus as users would be prone to ignoring or overcoming them.

Mr Burgess said of this breakdown: "Don't create security policy in a vacuum. Don't force workers to choose between doing their job and following policy."

Furthermore, he stated that sustained contact between a company and all users would ensure that data would be handled properly and people would be more willing to ask for security assistance.

Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile showed that it was not only small businesses prone to data leaks, with 17 million customer records lost by the company earlier in the month.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.