Traditional anti-virus solutions are becoming less and less capable of protecting machines, firms have been warned.

Graham Ahearne, technical product manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at security firm Symantec, said the "exploding" numbers of malware means well-worn security systems may no longer be up to the job.

It is crucial that businesses have a formal online security suite in place to protect them from cyber crime and potentially damaging malware.

"One of the key things is that traditional anti-virus and its reactive nature of protection is becoming less and less exclusively capable of protecting machines," Mr Ahearne said.

With many security vendors adding in excess of 20,000 new signatures to their anti-virus definitions every day, the security expert said traditional protection tools that don't update regularly could leave machines susceptible to attack.

"What that means is that even if your definitions as a user are out of date by a day or even a couple of hours, there is a lot of malware that'll appear on the internet that you're potentially open to attack from," he said.

"The amount of malware that we see today is exploding all the time – the numbers continue to increase."