Police are powerless to stop super-smart criminals from hacking the world's biggest companies, a top-ranking security bod has warned.

Juniper Networks' security chief said there was simply no longer any point in calling the police when hackers and DDoSers came to call, because the cops can't do anything. He wants to see a world where big firms share information about potential targets and stop them before any damage can be done.

Henrik Davidson, the firm's director of security, said: "The problem is too big for the authorities to handle, playing into the hands of the cyber criminals. Additionally there are complications with the global complexity that hacking presents. Who is responsible if a hacker based in Asia attacks a European company? We’ve simply reached a stage where the IT security industry needs to be able to protect itself."

According to a Juniper survey of 4,771 IT execs worldwide, 60 per cent said their systems had been attacked in the past 12 months. But the same percentage of execs were unhappy with their current defense systems, including next-generation firewalls and IP blocking.

"Traditional security methods just aren’t passing the test and companies don’t stand a chance as cyber-crime becomes increasingly sophisticated and more frequent."