2014 was a banner year for malware

Symantec released its latest report on the state of malware for the past year.

Some of the findings:

• More than 317 million new pieces of malware were created last year, nearly a million a day
• Ransomware attacks grew 113 percent
• Crypto-ransom attacks, where the victim's files are encrypted and held hostage without warning, skyrocketed 4,000 percent to become a serious threat
• 70 percent of social media attacks rely on the initial victim to spread the threat to others

Kevin Haley, director of security response at Symantec, said: "The criminals are getting better. Success breeds success and other criminals want to get into the game, so we need to step up our game in terms of protecting our information and keeping it safe."

Data breaches saw a 23% increase over 2013, which in itself was a huge year for breaches. Although big business was a major target, the year saw 60% of such breaches targeted small and medium-sized companies last year.

Companies were also targeted with malicious emails. Often they came appear to come from someone inside the company or from a trusted business associate. Breaches resulting from these spear-phishing attacks grew 8 percent last year.

Another form of attack is called "trojanized" software updates. Malicious code is hidden in software updates so the company effectively infect themselves when they update their software.

Cybercriminals still favor email for the bulk of their dirty work, but the shift is on to social media because it's so effective.

"We do the work for them," Haley said. "They only have to infect one of us and it quickly cascades to our friends and their friends, and so on."

Source: NBC News