Nearly 12 million new IP addresses have been taken over by cybercriminals since January, marking a 50 per cent rise since 2008, according to a security provider.

The McAfee first quarter threat report revealed that spam quantities are also on the rise, with cybercriminals finding a range of new ways to send bulk spam emails.

The Koobface virus has also made a comeback following the identification by McAfee that numerous servers are hosting illegitimate content and continuing to increase in popularity among malware writers.

Jeff Green, senior vice-president of McAfee Avert Labs, said: "The massive expansion of these botnets provides cybercriminals with the infrastructure they need to flood the web with malware. Essentially, this is cybercrime enablement."

The poll follows the recent Unisys Security Index, which showed that 72 per cent of citizens in the UK believe they are at major risk of identity theft and other cybercrimes due to the economic crisis.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.