ROME, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) — Cyberattacks in Italy increased nearly four times as fast as the global average in the first six months of this year, according to a report released here on Thursday.

In the report released during the Mid-Year Security Summit, the Italian Association for Information Security (CLUSIT) said that the country registered a 40-percent increase in cyberattacks in the first half of this year compared with the level of the same period in 2022.

Globally, the increase is 11 percent year-on-year, according to the report co-authored by 100 researchers.

“The cybersecurity landscape is changing quickly, and countries must act in order to be protected,” commented Luca Bechelli, a cybersecurity and information advisor with Partners4Innovation, a consultancy. “Manufacturers in Italy are proving particularly vulnerable.”

CLUSIT said that more than a third of the cyberattacks in Italy targeted the country’s manufacturing sector. The healthcare and public administration sectors are also commonly impacted.

Overall, the global economic damage from cyberattacks is estimated to increase from 3 trillion U.S. dollars in 2015 to 10.5 trillion U.S. dollars by 2025.

Bechelli and other speakers attributed Italy’s vulnerability to cyberattacks in part to its large number of small and medium-sized companies.

Compared to large businesses, smaller businesses are often more vulnerable to cyberattacks because they lack the economic resources and staff to guard against them.

A lack of what one speaker called “cybersecurity culture” is another factor that puts Italian companies at risk.

Speakers at the summit said that one kind of cyberattack that is on the rise involves “hacktivists” — hacker activists who break into computer systems for politically or socially motivated purposes.