There was a huge jump in the number of websites that had to be blocked by a major online company, according to a new survey.

Symantec's MessageLabs Intelligence Report revealed that 3,000 potentially harmful websites had to be blocked every day to halt the progression of malware to computer systems around the world, meaning that such websites had tripled in number during the month.

The data shows that the percentage of email-based malware - which redirects people to malicious websites - rose to its highest recorded level since June 2008.

MessageLabs senior analyst Paul Wood said of the results: "Having focused on email tactics for the latter half of 2008 and 2009, the cybercriminals are varying their strategies and turning towards web-related tactics, so not to become too predictable."

Many of these malware problems could result in a disaster requiring data recovery, highlighting the volatility of the threats posed.

Last week, Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, said that small businesses in IT were neglecting the use of anti-virus software - something he said was very dangerous to a company.

New research from Connect found that, on average, it takes businesses that use backup tapes take 11.6 hours to retrieve and restore files. Connect is now recommending that SMEs switch to online backup.