That's about one every 10 minutes. It could just be the tip of the iceberg given experts believe many crimes go unreported, either because the victims are to embarrassed, often the case in romantic scams, or aren't even aware what has occurred.

The annual cost of cybercrime to Australian business has been estimated at just under $30 billion or about five per cent of this year's Federal budget spending.

Losses average out at about $700 per victim although individual losses above $50,000 are far from rare.

The most surprising statistic to emerge from the ACSC's most recent report, released on Monday as part of "Stay Smart Online Week", is the age range most affected.

According to the ACSC survey on which the report was based, two-thirds of all victims were aged between 25 and 34. Of these about 94 per cent were male.

Females seem to be at much lower risk than their male counterparts.

Cybercrime, of course, is not unique to Australia.

According to a report sponsored by McAfee, the internet security provider, in 2014 cybercrime cost the global economy almost half a trillion dollars. If Australian trends are anything to by you could probably double, or even triple, that figure by now.

If a more recent estimate, by the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies, is on the money, then the cost of cybercrime, which includes romantic scams, online fraud involving the sale of non-existent goods, bank account hacks and identity theft, is tracking at about one per cent of global GDP per year.

That is a huge impost on the world economy which holds back growth, does untold damage to individuals and businesses and drives up the cost of everything we buy.

While some forms of cybercrime, such as cyber extortion which usually involves denial of service attacks by malicious hackers on a website, email server or computer network who then demand a ransom to restore control, are hard to predict and prevent, the majority of assaults are much simpler.

These are the online assaults and real time frauds committed against individuals hundreds of times a day.

One of the most common of these is "phishing", the sending of links to malicious websites in emails shotgunned to tens of thousands of users.

In some cases the scam can be as simple as pretending to be a bank, a government agency or even the tax office and asking for account log in details.

One of life's great mysteries has to be why so many 25 to 34-year-olds, who you would expect to be the most computer-literate generation ever, fall for this type of thing. These are, after all, the people who grew up with the world wide web.

It comes as no surprise, given the ubiquity of computers, smart phones and internet dependence, that geography is no defence. You are just as likely to be hacked if you lived in the Northern Territory, South Australia or Tasmania as if you live in Sydney or Melbourne.

"There are more spiders than ever on the world wide web," ACSC chief, Rachel Nobel, said.

While there are no magic bullets to make this problem go away it is as true now as it ever was that the individual remains the first and last line of defence.