The UK came fifth with 107 attacks per 1000 PCs, more than double the level of 52 attacks per 1000 PCs in India.

Jon Ramsey, SecureWorks' chief technology officer, said that the statistics show that a substantial number of vulnerable computers in countries worldwide have been compromised and are being used as bots to launch cyber attacks.

"Overall, the study shows that not only are organisations and individuals putting themselves at risk by not securing them, but they are actually providing cyber criminals with a platform to compromise other computers", he said.

According to Ramsey, the reasons for the difference in the number of attempted attacks per country stems from a number of issues, ranging from the overall internet speeds in a country to how pro-active the ISPs are in protecting their clients to general user education on security. "The ratio of Windows, Mac and Linux users in a country will also make a big difference", he explained.

Interestingly, the SecureWorks CTO went on to say that, as the use of online banking, shopping, social networking, and other sensitive computer activities are increasing in popularity, the basics of computer security must be implemented. "These include keeping your antivirus software, web browsers and applications properly up to date and patched to following safe computer practices such as only opening attachments and downloading programmes that you trust", he said.

Don Smith, SecureWorks vice president, said that the result of a successful cyber attack on organisations can be dramatic and range from the loss of intellectual property, productivity and revenue to possible dented shareholder or consumer confidence in the event of disclosure.

"Even though worrying numbers of cyber thefts are being carried out across the world, many organisations still wait until after they have been the victim of an internal or external breach to deploy security measures", he said.

So what can companies do to stop their PCs becoming part of the statistics?

According to SecureWorks, there are a variety of techniques that can be introduced to help secure systems and prevent attacks. A multi-layered solution provides compensating controls that can help reduce data loss.

Traditional methods, argue SecureWorks, such as firewalls and anti-virus software should be combined with intrusion prevention services, access control, data encryption, tokenization, vulnerability scans, network segmentation and log monitoring to perform a rich analysis of networks and effectively protect systems.