Chinese companies are better protected from cyberattacks than those of any other nation, and governments often launch such assaults on private companies, a report signalled on Thursday.

A survey of 600 IT executives found more widespread use of security measures such as encryption and user authentication in China than anywhere else, with an adoption rate of over 60 per cent. This compared with 50-53 per cent for the US, the UK and Australia, the next highest-ranked countries.

More than half of those surveyed added they had encountered “large scale denial of service attacks” by high level adversaries, such as organised crime or nation states. In addition, 59 per cent said they believed foreign governments had been involved in cyberattacks targeting infrastructure in their countries.