“These guys don’t report their activities to (research firm) IDC,” he says. “It’s very hard know exactly how big the industry is but you can be sure it is going to get a whole lot bigger.”

He says banks and other institutions that are regularly targeted by cyber criminals are also reluctant to discuss the problem, fearful that it will have a negative impact on their corporate reputations.

Rather than tackling the problem head on, Kaspersky says many banks find it easier to “write off” losses, allocating a proportion of their turn-over to pay back customers who fall victim to cybercrimes.

While it is difficult to track the location of cyber criminals, because of the extensive use of proxy servers, it’s believed Russia, Latin America and China are leading the global expansion.

“Unfortunately we have a lot of cyber criminals in Russia and they are very determined people,” says Kaspersky. “But when you look at the total number of talented software engineers then it’s easy to see that there could be a whole lot more.”