IT contractors may be required to help small firms to improve their information security processes and protect their assets.

A recent report from Trend Micro finds that small to medium-sized enterprises are 23 per cent less likely to have data leak prevention solutions in operation.

This is despite the firm establishing that data leaks were the primary concern for 55 per cent of businesses.

Reacting to the news, the development manager for DeviceLock Alexei Lesnykh said that the complexity of data leak protection (DLP) systems puts them out of reach for many small companies.

"To really target the small and medium business segment, the infosecurity industry should offer endpoint DLP solutions with much better price/performance and with more simplified installation and configuration," he said.

Mr Lesnykh also suggested that the expense of DLP also makes it difficult for small businesses, who simply do not have a big enough security budget to implement one.