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A bogus Lord has been jailed for his part in an IT security breach at a Japanese bank.

Hugh Rodley, 61, was among the gang sentenced to jail for attempting to steal GBP 229 million from the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.

The group nearly succeeded in their heist, in which they broke into the bank's London headquarters and installed spyware on the firm's computers.

However, the group failed in their bid to transfer the funds because of complications during the final stage of the money transfer.

'Lord' Rodley will spend eight years in jail after he was convicted of conspiracy at Snaresbrook Crown Court.

Bank employees also realised that their computers had been tampered with when they returned to work, where a number of computer network cables had been removed.

A statement from the bank said: "Following the fraud attempt, we conducted a full review of our internal procedures and have subsequently continued to enhance them further."

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.