Around one in five attacks on the internet in 2009 up to now has targeted a social networking website, it has been revealed.

According to the Nebulas Solutions Group, 19 per cent of hacking incidents have been levelled at the growing world of personal websites, using the likes of Twitter to launch such initiatives, perhaps highlighting the importance of disaster recovery should personal effects be claimed by fraudsters.

Nick Garlick, the managing director of Nebulas Solutions Group, explained that anecdotal evidence is truly highlighting the scale of the problem.

He continued: "Many companies still don't fully comprehend the security risks that social networking sites and user-generated content can represent, so this report is a wake-up call for them and highlights the need to address these issues as a key priority."

This week, it was discovered by Pear Analytics that 40 per cent of posts made by users of Twitter are "pointless babble", highlighting the culture which has emerged on the website in the last few months.

A recent survey for Connect found that one in ten companies has lost important data as a result of a backup failure. The company has now developed a unique online backup service for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster.