£1.8bn spent to stop the spammers

Worms, Trojans and spam are driving a massive £1.8bn security spend by UK businesses.

Most companies now have standard firewall and antivirus protection in place, according to Point Topic research, with larger companies also splashing out on disaster recovery and compliance monitoring to weed out security violations and further protect the business.

Incredibly, the research revealed one per cent of businesses with data access still have no security in place - that's a staggering 37,000 UK businesses, according to Point Topic.

When it comes to footing the bill, the companies that are best off are those with 11 to 50 staff - these businesses are paying just £4.50 per employee per month. Smaller companies with 10 staff or fewer spend £11.30 per employee while those with more than 50 staff are spending £15.80 per employee on average.