The cat-and-mouse game led to a 7.5 percent growth for the security market in the region last year to reach US$1.43 billion, according to the Asia/Pacific Semiannual Security Software Tracker of independent analyst firm IDC. The second half of last year grew to US$755 million against the same period in 2009, registering double-digit growth for most markets.

The new areas of attack are in the cloud and in the virtualisation space. "Improper use" of social media is also to blame, said IDC.

"Confidential information of the companies may be breached by improper use of social network media and network connected. Furthermore, organisations have to face the increasing amount of 'Zero Day' malware coming from hackers," said Marco Lam, market analyst, IDC Asia/Pacific Software Research.

Lam warned that security threats, including "misdeeds" such as identity fraud, are not going to stop or slow down. Worse, organisations are not stand-alone prey of the security threats. In a connected world, the customers and partners of different organisations can also be affected as they form part of the network.