A spokesman from the Business Software Alliance (BSA), a non-profit trade association which seeks to promote the safe and legal use of technological platforms, said some organisations may be installing items illegally without knowing.

Julian Swan, EMEA director of compliance marketing for the BSA, said there are two areas where businesses could be seen to be breaking the law - one of which was the acquisition of products through unlawful channels and the other was in the area of licensing.

"There is lots of evidence that companies, often because they're negligent and sometimes are just not terribly well run, just don't know what is there and don't have policies in place that stop their employees downloading software," he said.

Mr Swan also suggested software can often be shared around departments and offices and ends up installed on more systems than it might legally be be designed for.

"In a lot of cases it's negligence which is why we try and raise it as an issue so people are aware of it," he added.

The latest annual International Data Corporation software piracy study revealed that the amount of money lost by the software industry due to piracy in the UK reached around £1.49 billion last year.

In addition, it was found that illegal installations across Britain grew to 27 per cent during 2008.