Hackers are after your money, warns Symantec

The report also revealed that the time between the identification of a vulnerability and the release of a code to exploit it has been cut to an average of 5.8 days, which it said gives organisations one week to patch a vulnerable system.

"Once an exploit has been released, the vulnerability is often widely scanned for and quickly exploited," the company said.

According to Donovan the turnaround time for hackers had increased incredibly in the last three years.

"In 2001 there was a time frame for vulnerability and exploit release of 120 days, now it's five to six days," he said. "Patches take about 30 days to deploy once the system is checked. People need better warning systems and better management systems to accelerate patch deployment."

Symantec also recorded a rise in the detection of bots -- "programs that are covertly installed on a targeted system", according to the company, allowing the hacker to control the computer remotely -- from 2,000 detections per day to more than 30,000. The number peaked at 75,000 in one day.

However, Donavan said the rise in bot activity is usual as bot statistics change on a "fairly regular basis".

Symantec said the emergence rate of new "easy-to-exploit" vulnerabilities has also increased in the last report period, with more than 1,297 documented, averaging out to 48 new vulnerabilities per week.

"Seventy percent of these vulnerabilities were considered easy to exploit, and 96 percent were considered moderately or highly severe," the company said.

"Consequently, organisations must contend with an average of more than seven new vulnerabilities per day, and a significant percentage of these vulnerabilities could result in a partial or complete compromise of the targeted system."

Topping the ranks as the most popular attack threat was the "Slammer worm", according to the report, with 15 percent of the attacks. Gaobot and its variants were the second most prevalent attack, recording a 600 percent increase over the report period.