A recent report by a security company has revealed the top five industries most affected by malware.

Pharmaceutical and chemical, energy and oil, engineering and construction, transportation and shipping alongside travel and leisure were highlighted as the top sectors most susceptible to viruses, according to ScanSafe's newest report, the Vertical Risk.

Energy and oil was 156 per cent more likely to be infected than the average industry, making it the leading sector affected.

Mary Landesman, the senior security researcher at ScanSafe, asserted that her company's report expected to be putting media and publishing at the top of its study due to the research-intensive nature of the business.

"We were concerned to find that the industries consistently encountering the highest rate of web-delivered malware are not typical industries, but rather industries that can have critical bearing on infrastructure and intellectual property rights," she concluded.

Malware is a term used to describe any type of software which is designed to cause damage to a single computer, network or company server.

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.