A recent report has underlined how many people are managing personal risks with an increased level of awareness in the last few months.

According to the Get Safe Online Report, the proportion of people, including those in small businesses in IT, using different passwords to access protected websites had increased, jumping from 31 per cent in 2007 to 33 per cent in 2009.

Garreth Griffiths, the head of UK risk management at PayPal, said the GetSafeOnline.org report is a non-commercial way of keeping people safe, adding: "There's so much that the internet can do for you, so much pleasure you can get out of it.

"Nowadays we do everything online and I think it's important to avoid something bad from happening and damaging that love affair with the internet."

Despite this, Mr Griffiths said there was a long way to go before everyone was doing the right thing, particularly given that 71 per cent of people still do not feel hugely safe when using the web.

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.