Many people around the country, including those who work in small business in the IT sector, know they should protect their computer from hackers and viruses yet still do not take action, an expert has said.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said that he struggled to understand why people would be put off getting something which could save their computer from a meltdown later down the line, noting that people did not need to exert themselves after making the initial purchase, like keeping it up to date.

He explained: "I don't mean monthly updates or weekly updates - your anti-virus software should be looking to see if there are any updates on an hourly basis and it should be doing that invisibly in the background.

Mr Cluley added that it should not be something the user needs to intervene with and that "it should be seamless".

Recently, BBC's technology programme Click created a now-deactivated program which hacked over 22,000 computers within a short space of time, highlighting how easy it is to get one on a personal or work terminal.

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.