The past year has been a pretty turbulent one for IT security with high profile data breaches, Apple and the FBI wrangling over encryption, persistent threats from ransomware and more.

So as industry experts begin to roll out their predictions for 2017, what can we look forward to, or what do we need to beware of, in the security field?

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As we reported earlier this week Yahoo has suffered yet another major security breach. This will have sent many users scurrying to change their passwords, but what else can you do to protect your account?

Adam Levin, chairman and founder of identity protection specialist IDT911 suggests that users need to start telling lies. He doesn't mean lying about the fact that you have a Yahoo account -- though given the severity of breaches it has suffered that might save you some embarrassment. No, he means telling lies in the answers to your security questions.

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A new survey of over 250 senior IT executives reveals that 89 percent of IT leaders are planning on implementing more cloud based disaster recovery in the next year.

The study by disaster recovery and business continuity specialist Quorum also reveals that 80 percent of IT leaders say it takes more than an hour for them to recover from a server failure, with more than 25 percent saying they need more than two hours.

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Companies are struggling to manage and secure their WANs, especially at branch locations, according to the findings of a new report.

The study, conducted by Dimensional Research for Versa Networks, finds almost all participants state that maintaining security policies, network devices and complexity due to cloud and mobile applications are the most difficult aspects of managing the WAN.

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While 75 percent of organizations set fixed time limits for investigating potential security incidents, many of them fail to meet their investigating and reporting targets.

According to a study from contextual security technology company Balabit 44 percent of respondents report missing internal or external deadlines for investigating or reporting a breach in the last year, and seven percent say a missed deadline had resulted in serious consequences.

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Modern day malware is all about stealing, whether it's data or money. That means to be effective it needs to communicate with its command and control servers.

A new technology released by cloud-based anti-malware company Percipient Networks for its Strongarm product aims to break this link without the need for VPNs or other potentially hard to implement solutions.

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Marketers are shifting their focus away from customer acquisition and tools like buy buttons in favor of brand loyalty and awareness according to a new study.

The report from email marketing platform Campaigner shows that compared to this year 9.5 percent fewer marketers have customer acquisition as a top goal for 2017, while 14 percent more selected brand awareness and 11.4 percent brand loyalty.

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A new survey reveals that big data deployments are on the rise and increasingly are in the cloud. More than half of respondents say they deploy big data in the cloud today and 72 percent plan on doing so in the future.

The study from self-service analytics platform AtScale shows close to 70 percent have been using big data for more than a year (compared to 59 percent last year) and 95 percent of respondents have achieved positive value or are anticipating that they will.

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We've already seen this week that ransomware is an increasingly popular attack method. The fact that it's a profitable activity for cyber criminals is underlined today by a new report from IBM Security which reveals that 70 percent of businesses pay up to regain access to their data.

This puts criminals on target to make nearly $1 billion in 2016 from their use of the malware. Indeed, the report shows that ransomware made up nearly 40 percent of all spam e-mails sent in 2016, up from less than 0.6 percent in the previous year.

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Ransomware remains a major threat with attacks using Locky and Cryptowall both increasing by 10 percent in November compared with the previous month.

The latest report from threat prevention specialist Check Point based on its Global Threat Index shows the number of active malware families and number of attacks remain close to an all-time high thanks to continued relentless attacks on business networks.

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Weak or reused passwords are one of the main causes of security breaches and nobody is immune from the problem.

Password manager company Dashlane is seeking to raise awareness of the issue with the release of what it calls its P@ssholes List, highlighting the celebrities and high profile organizations that have fallen victim to poor password habits in the past year.

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Microsoft's Office 365 suite and Google's G Suite are deployed in 66 percent of organizations in the EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) region, but Office 365 on 44 percent is outpacing G Suite on 22 percent.

This is one of the findings of a new EMEA cloud report from data protection company Bitglass which shows that adoption of cloud suites is higher than in any other region. In Europe, France and the Netherlands have the highest rates of cloud adoption at 82 percent and 78 percent.

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Gamification is increasingly used by business as a means of enhancing the usability of software. But now it seems hackers are exploiting the technique too.

Researchers at threat protection company Forcepoint have uncovered a DDoS package being shared on Turkish hacking forums employing a gamified approach.

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Public awareness of data security issues has never been higher. Not only have data breaches made the news but the FBI's battle with Apple has put encryption in the headlines too.

Yet despite the high profile of threats a new survey of IT security professionals from secure browser company Authentic8 shows that businesses aren't taking basic steps to protect themselves.

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The cloud is becoming the first place many businesses turn to when looking to increase their storage capacity.

Web hosting and cloud services company DreamHost is looking to give enterprises more scalable, reliable, and high performing cloud storage with the launch of its latest DreamObjects storage hosting service.

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