Did you know that the total size of the internet population has almost doubled in the past five years, from 1.319 billion in 2007 to 2.26 billion today?

This staggering rise in usage has had an exponential effect on everything we do online, including Google searches, emails sent, Facebook status updates, daily tweets and mobile data. And, over this same period, our willingness to share so much about ourselves on and in these platforms has also increased the risk of using them – the number of new unique threats per day has risen from 57 in 2008 to an eyebrow-raising 6,300 this year.

Thankfully, the security tools we use today have also improved accordingly, but users need to be proactive and take responsibility to ensure that their desktop machines, smartphones and tablets are protected.

(Source: Trend Micro. Security image via Shutterstock.)