South Africa went from 67th position in November to 63rd in December 2015, on the list of the world's most-attacked nations.
This is according to Check Point's ThreatCloud World Cyber Threat Map, which tracks how and where cyber attacks are taking place worldwide in real-time.
The map consists of 142 countries and reveals the most common malware families used to attack organisations' networks and mobile devices globally in December 2015.
In a statement, Check Point says the risk of a company being infected by malware increased by 17% in December, while the number of active malware families increased by 25%.
Check Point also identified more than 1 500 different active malware families during December, up from 1 200 in the previous month.
Doros Hadjizenonos, country manager of Check Point South Africa, says South African organisations were targeted by all three malware families and spread through infected USB sticks and other media, and through compromised HTML files.
"The fact that malware is entering South African organisations through infected devices and compromised Web sites makes it even more crucial that businesses use threat extraction and sandboxing tools to remove malware before it enters the network."
He adds: "Equally important is fostering a culture of security among staff, as humans are often the weakest link in the security chain. Rather than just blocking staff from accessing certain Web sites, for example, they should be told why they are being blocked and what could happen if they choose to access the Web site anyway."
Meanwhile, neighbouring country Namibia was named as the world's most-attacked nation by cyber criminals during December 2015, after being second most attacked in November last year.
A total of seven African countries appeared among the top 20 most-attacked nations: Namibia (1), Malawi (6), Cameroon (8), Tunisia (11), Mauritius (12), Botswana (13), and Nigeria (17).
"The increase in active malware during December highlights the severity of the threat posed to organisations' networks and sensitive data. As a result, organisations should be pushing cyber security to the top of their agendas for 2016, as cyber criminals continually find new ways to attack networks, so that they can be equally relentless in robustly securing their networks."
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