The danger of high-tech crime is growing exponentially, with the number of hack attacks against UK businesses mirroring Moore's Law, the National High-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) has warned.

John Lyons, crime reduction co-ordinator with the NHTCU, said high-tech law enforcement needs radical changes, because the danger from cyber-crime is following the growth trend observed by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, by doubling every 18 months.

"Traditional crime has shown a growth rate of five per cent per annum, but high-tech crime is growing many times more quickly and is following Moore's Law in the past and into the future," he warned.

"Some 18 per cent of companies surveyed were hacked in the past 12 months."

Lyons highlighted the extent of the fast growing cyber-crime threat by pointing to the results of a recent NOP study commissioned by the NHTCU, called The Impact of High-Tech Crime on UK Business.

The study of UK businesses found that only three per cent of UK corporates had not been hit by high-tech crime in the past 12 months.

They considered the sabotage of data or networks the most serious threat, with 91 per cent of respondents placing this top of their danger list.

"It is not surprising that data networking sabotage is considered to be the most serious threat," said Lyons.

"However, alarmingly one third of companies do not have a formal procedure for dealing with high-tech crime if attacked."

Virus attacks were also feared, with 90 per cent of companies citing them as a serious concern.

Financial fraud, the theft of proprietary information, and denial of service attacks took third, fourth and fifth places.

In addition, the NHTCU's research showed that the theft of laptops was the most common tech-related crime for 77 per cent of companies during the past 12 months.

Virus attacks were the most common cyber-crime, with 67 per cent admitting they had fallen victim in the past year.

Lyons predicted that the number of social engineering attacks would increase dramatically during the coming year.

"Social engineering is not a joke at all," he said. "There are an increasing number of cases with company staff around the world being tricked into providing sensitive data."