Thailand was ranked 28th in the world last year in terms of cybersecurity risks by a global security software firm due to increasingly sophisticated attacks.
Symantec Corporation reported that Thailand ranked 28th among 157 countries and territories, pushing its ranking down one notch from 2012.
Pramut Sriwichian, country manager of Symantec (Thailand), said the US, China, India, the Netherlands and Germany were the top five in terms of internet security threats in 2013.
Thailand saw an increasing number of cybersecurity threats and hacking attempts as the country lacked a data security law, he said.
"The country is in urgent need of a law in order to ensure consumer confidence and improve business credibility," said Mr Pramut.
He said 2013 was a year of mega data breaches as global attacks soared by 62% and 552 million identities were exposed.
Up to eight incidents were huge breaches that each exposed more than 10 million identities, compared with only one such incident in 2012.
Top data breaches are names, birth dates and government ID numbers. Healthcare facilities, educational institutions and public companies were involved in 58% of all data breaches.
The retail, computer software and financial sectors accounted for 77% of exposed identities.
Mr Pramut said the number of reported security vulnerabilities in 2013 continued to increase from 2012.
Targeted attacks also posed another major threat to the internet world. These are attacks that target only one person or a specific smaller group of persons.
He said the number of mobile and social media security threats also increased, with evidence that 38% of smartphone users suffered from cybersecurity attacks in the previous 12 months.
Mr Pramut said security vulnerability, data breaches or leaks and mobile security are the top three security threats in Thailand as companies still lack the security standard ISO 27001 and other methods to ensure data security.
The retail, manufacturing and service sectors are among those having the weakest security systems.
He stressed Thailand has an urgent need to implement a data privacy law in order to ensure consumer confidence to use cloud-based online services and improve business credibility, particularly in health care and medical services.
Mr Pramut is also concerned that the absence of a functioning government has delayed many security investment projects in both the private and public sectors.
"Further delays [in improving security protection systems] will weaken the Thai government's security system, particularly those cloud-based services," he said.
In the past four months, organisations have been freezing their investment in security projects due to the country's political impasse.
The financial sector remained the top spender in the country as banks needed to comply with the Bank of Thailand's regulations governing industry data security standards for credit cards.
Telecom and healthcare firms are among the top potential spenders.