Almost 40 per cent of UK organisations admit to protecting less than a quarter of their network traffic, according to the annual security survey conducted by SafeNet.

The report revealed that five per cent of UK organisations have no security measures at all to protect the data crossing their networks, a slight improvement from six per cent in 2006.

However, the survey also showed that overall levels of network protection are falling. Some 34 per cent of organisations encrypt only between one and 25 per cent of their data.

"The level of encryption required will obviously vary from organisation to organisation, but companies should be looking to encrypt as much network traffic as possible, if not all of it," said Gary Clark, vice president of SafeNet in EMEA.

"However, I am concerned to see that the number of organisations implementing security measures and encryption policies has decreased over the past 12 months. "

A point of concern is that 17 per cent of the senior executives surveyed were not sure of encryption rates for their network data, suggesting that awareness of security is not at the level it should be among top-level management.

"With the increase in mobile and remote working, mission-critical data is flowing freely inside and outside the firewall so cyber-criminals have more opportunity to access and take advantage of sensitive data," warned Clark.

The report was based on a survey of 1,200 IT directors and security professionals from government agencies, financial services and retail organisations about their encryption and security policies.