Data-stealing malware is seeing huge growth as it helps those criminals who want monetary gain from important information found on the internet, it has been suggested.

Such malware could pose a serious threat to small businesses in IT as Jamz Yaneza, threat research manager for Trend Micro, said that providing valuable data is what the internet does best.

His comments come after TrendLabs reported that 93 per cent of data-stealing malware were Trojans in the first quarter of 2009, in comparison to 87 per cent last year.

"Smaller organisations have a limited IT budget and few IT staff so they hire a third party to build a website. Over time, the site fails to be maintained or upgraded," commented Trend Micro advanced threat researcher Paul Ferguson.

BitDefender recently released a list of the top ten e-threats detected in May.

Trojans took up six of the ten places, with Trojan.Clicker.CM in second position.

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).