Computer security spending in the UK outdoes efforts by counterparts in Canada, China and the US, a recent report by an IT industry body has asserted.

In research carried out by CompTIA, businesses were found to be willing to spend an average of 18 per cent of their IT department's budget on improving security measures, according to Computing.

Consistent uptime for servers, a smaller chance of data loss and less-interrupted productivity meant that the average big UK business was saving £3.3 million, effectively making security controls pay for themselves.

Speaking to the news provider, European vice-president at CompTIA Matthew Poyiadgi stated that learning and understanding security certification was not so different to any other training initiative.

He said that a "a targeted approach that takes into account the business objectives, the trainee's needs and the existing IT capabilities will always give better results than throwing money at a badly thought-out programme.”

In the British Computer Society's predictions for 2008, it proposed that spyware and targeted cyber attacks would be the major threats to security, highlighting that laptop encryption would also be necessary, as with other portable mediums.

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.