Detica, the IT company specialising in confidential national security work, will on Thursday lift the lid on a secret project aimed at signficantly expanding its activities in the commercial world and providing the most powerful solution to spam and viruses spread over the internet.

Detica, which said in May its pre-tax profits this year would fall to around £9m as it spent £2.5m on developing an “internet security product”, will reveal it has established a new subsidiary to make and market it.