Small businesses in IT are not dedicating enough of their resources to securing any wireless local area network (WLAN) systems.

Amit Sinha, the chief technologist of Motorola Enterprise Wireless LAN, stated that many firms are unaware of how vulnerable their wireless networks could be.

He said: "They do not realise that there are misconfigurations in their WLAN, rogue WLAN devices and poor policy enforcement."

The expert proposed that using a secure infrastructure that employs constant wireless monitoring and policy enforcement is what businesses require in such a situation to alleviate any worries.

Many will overlook this however, Mr Sinha adds, because some believe it will cost too much to fix - particularly given the current economic outlook.

Companies could employ wireless-aware firewalls to prevent threats from entering the network, he advised.

Recent research by Motorola found that just 30 per cent of small businesses in IT use a type of wireless intrusion prevention system, with a further 58 per cent spending over two hours a week searching for rogue access points - something which could be "easily automated".

According to a recent survey by Connect, the two biggest IT headaches for businesses were 'everyday hassles with IT' (37 per cent) and 'security concerns' (32 per cent).