Back in 2009, when I wrote my pivotal article on which antivirus program is best (which still holds very true by the way), I mentioned the then current figures on new malware samples per month found by AV-test.org. Back then  it was a little over 1 million unique samples per month. The current figures? a bar graph is worth a thousand words (click on it for a bigger version): 

That’s about 5 million new samples per month!!

For data on what to do to stay safe and malware-free despite this rampant escalating numbers, see the article I refer to at the beginning of this one.