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The company covered 400 hotspots in the Canary Wharf area and another 400 hotspots around London generally, checking the status of the Wi-Fi.

Whereas a year ago, in its first Wardrive, 40% of all networks in the Canary Wharf district were unencrypted, this year only 35% were left vulnerable to hackers. However, outside of Canary Wharf, the level of unencrypted hot spots fell even further to 31%.

'London's overall traffic encryption proved to be better than that of the business district,' Kaspersky says. 'This was also noted in Paris (29% for the city as a whole, 37% for La Defense). Last year, Canary Wharf had better numbers than London as a whole, but has slipped this year.'

What transmission speeds were recorded on the available networks? In Canary Wharf, the vast majority (81%) offered 54Mb/sec, with 16.2% offering 11Mb/sec. In London generally, 66.6% recorded 54Mb/sec, with 12% recording 11Mb/sec.

The research was conducted between 24 and 26 April 2007 and you can find more information about the Wardrive in London here.