If redundancies are to be made in a company, the organisation in question must make them properly and with dignity, otherwise there could be a risk of revenge attacks, it has been stated.

According to Infosecurity Europe's Tamar Beck, people are particularly worried about losing their job in the current climate and as a result, many are willing to take a parting shot at their employers if they feel they have been dismissed unreasonably.

The expert cited the case of an individual in San Francisco, who held the local government to ransom by closing down their websites after being let go as network manager.

Ms Beck added that "the other danger is you might not find what's been tampered with".

She said: "Someone could corrupt data rather than remove it and to track data integrity is a huge issue."

According to ReThink Recruitment research, the number of UK IT directors looking to hire IT staff still outweighs those firing people.

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.