A new report has suggested that there was a notable rise in new malicious code threats during last year, increasing the burden placed on data security systems of small businesses in IT.

The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report found that a total of 1,656,227 malicious codes had been detected during 2008, recording a 265 per cent increase on the previous year's total when just 624,267 new code signatures were found by the company.

Six Trojans were in the top ten new code families detected, with the Brisv Trojan being the most widely reported instance of malware and others including back door components and virus components to threaten the security of information worldwide.

The Brisv Trojan may have affected as many as 1.6 million computers, Symantec asserted, with a surge of activity also being recorded in February this year.

Senior technology consultant at Sophos Graham Cluley recently stated that people are simply not protecting their computers from such threats despite being well aware of the measures which can be taken.

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.