Data encryption is "essential" if businesses are to protect themselves and their customers, say industry experts.

Kaspersky, which develops, produces and distributes information security solutions, has advised of the importance of this practice, explaining the key strategy should be to minimise the "window of opportunity" for attacks.

David Emm, a senior technology consultant with Kaspersky, said that businesses should combine "sensible computing" with software which tries to look for "malicious code" to try and minimise the risk.

He explained: "You're not just talking about a potential hit to your organisation internally; you're talking about ramifications externally in terms of a loss of confidence.

"You want to make sure that have protection, not just in terms of antivirus but also personal firewalls and anti-spam and other types of defence as well."

Mr Emm added that, in his opinion, anyone handling third party data "really ought to be" using encryption.

According to research by Websense, 45 per cent of businesses have had their systems infected by viruses in the last year while 90 per cent have suffered from hacker attacks.

© Adfero Ltd