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The research, carried out by Infosecurity Europe on 285 companies as well as more in-depth interviews with 20 chief security officers found that companies face being the victim of this type of crime on a daily basis.

According to law experts, in reporting such crimes, firms often think the news of a breach could tarnish the reputation of the victim and cause more damage than the crime itself.

'From my experience as a media lawyer, reporting crime to the police is a double edged sword as invariably the press have found out about the incident within 24 hours of reporting it to the police, creating

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a real PR risk,' said media lawyer Jonathan Coad at law firm Swan Turton.

But Tony Neate, managing director of online safety campaign GetSafeOnline said that in order for police and other law enforcement agencies to fight crime effectively they need to know the scale of the problem.

'How and who we report to is a matter for debate, whether it is the ISP, bank, or local police,' he said. 'Without collating the scale of the e-crime problem, we will never truly be aware of the cost to society at large and the measures that need to be put in place to fight it.'

Phillip Virgo, secretary general of all-party parliament industry group Eurim said that small firms and consumers did not need to be patronised by the security industry if it wanted them to do business online.

'The time has come to respond to the needs of the customer for security tools they can understand, realistic advice, guidance and support on how to use them and for reporting systems that will route their enquiry to someone who will respond - be it law enforcement or technical support,' he said.