Companies must spend more of their IT budgets improving the protection of their web-based applications, according to a new report from Imperva, WhiteHat Security and the Ponemon Institute.

Only 18 per cent of corporate spending on IT contractors and IT strategy is dedicated to protecting-mission critical web applications, despite most firms believing these programs are the most vulnerable to cyber attacks, the survey finds.

In addition, 70 per cent of companies apparently do not see web application security as a priority.

White Hat founder Jermeiah Grossman commented: "Most of the largest and recent data breaches to date have been a result of attacks against web applications.

"To address today's real cyber threats, companies must shift their security strategy and prioritize the data and applications directly."

Last week, the Security Awareness Special Interest Group said businesses also need to converge the IT security policy across their departments.

This will increase the effectiveness of the defence against cyber attacks, the group claimed.