It’s that time of the year again: when the great and good of the cybersecurity industry reach for their crystal balls to anticipate what the threat landscape might look like in the next 12 months. We all know cybercriminals by and large don’t operate to annual deadlines.

But December still represents a good opportunity for us to point out what might be coming down the road. It’s what Trend Micro’s 1,200-strong global threat research team does all year round to ensure we’re prepared for anything the black hats can throw at us. The good news for the UK’s CISOs is that much of what we’ll see is a steady evolution from threats that will already be familiar to many. The bad news: that won’t make them any less dangerous.

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Historically, the idea of a hacker has always conjured up images of the outsider trying to gain access to government or corporate systems.

But in recent years it's become clear that insiders can present just as big a threat, whether from malicious intent or just careless use of systems.

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With massive data breaches uncovered daily or weekly, it’s hard not to be a bit numb to the urgency and magnitude of the issue. For most organizations, the problem is far from solved. Apathy in place of outrage at this juncture could diminish any help before it gets started. At the same time, misguided efforts will result in continued failure.

A giant Python-esque foot has not yet come down to condemn the ludicrousness of such a broad catastrophe but losses and damage have been mounting. This year, cybercrime overtook physical crime in the UK, marking a profound changing of the times. The National Crime Agency estimates the annual loss to UK businesses of £1 billion in direct costs, although the more realistic number is far greater, particularly considering the cost of stolen intellectual property and business secrets and other loss and damage not typically reported.

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The hatred WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange feels towards Hillary Clinton is far from being a secret. During the election campaign, the non-profit organization leaked Clinton emails in the hope that it would destroy her presidential hopes -- and we all know the result of the election.

As we slide gently into 2017, the WikiLeaks Twitter account has turned on the ignition and is about to hit the accelerator. The tweet says: "If you thought 2016 was a big WikiLeaks year 2017 will blow you away". On top of this, Assange himself is due to appear in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, denying Russia's involvement in hacking DNC emails.

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The system used by millions of travelers each day to share data between travel agencies, airlines, passengers and websites is incredibly insecure. Security researchers have presented details that highlight just how easy it is to hack flight bookings.

German security firm SR Labs says that using nothing more than a traveler's surname and a six-digit Passenger Name Record (PNR), it is possible to not only gather personal information about people, but also make changes to bookings.

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Threat intelligence is a popular topic in security circles these days. Many organizations are now using a threat feed that comes bundled with some other security product, such as McAfee’s GTI or IBM’s X-Force feeds. Lots of products, notably SIEMs, have added support for some sort of integration with specific threat intelligence feeds or more generic imports via STIX/TAXII. With many now hoping to take advantage of the large number of open source and free intelligence feeds available. Some are even investing in commercial intelligence feeds.

However, as many organizations quickly discover, without effective management of the threat intelligence lifecycle, making effective use of this valuable information is nearly impossible. Today, an organization has two choices for managing threat intelligence, these are to deploy a threat intelligence management platform, or a manual in-house management program. The steps required to set up a manual threat intelligence lifecycle program will be outlined below for those who prefer this approach.

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Security has never been a more pressing issue for businesses than it is now. Mobile working, the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated, connected devices, and the growing number of applications relied upon by the modern enterprise all represent potential risks that weren’t apparent in generations past.

There is a growing fear about the level of damage that cyberattacks could bring, so much so that the United Kingdom has launched a £1.9bn National Cyber Security Strategy to prevent such attacks.

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Hackers are having a moment. As high-profile breaches have become the norm over the last few years, more and more enterprise organizations have turned to bug bounty programs. As a result, the idea of hacking for good has finally begun to resonate with the general public. This rise in popularity has inspired many, from aspiring hackers to seasoned security professionals, to join the hunt and seek out bug bounty programs to "hack on".

As an information security professional by trade and a hacker by heart, I’ve had years of experience hacking for good. From my days as a penetration tester and security leadership roles at HP Fortify, Redspin and Citrix to hacking on bug bounty programs of all sizes, I have spent my life hacking for good -- much of this experience has been hacking on bug bounty programs.

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According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales published this October by the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS), the official crime rate all but doubled in the year ending June 2016 after the inclusion of online crime figures for the very first time. In fact, card fraud was cited as the most common crime in the UK. John Flatley, head of crime statistics and analysis at the ONS, stated that members of the public are now 20 times more likely to be a victim of fraud than of robbery.

The Numbers Are Soaring!

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We found out last week that one billion Yahoo accounts were hacked in 2013, only a couple months after we learned about a separate hack, that took place in 2014, which compromised an additional 500 million accounts. Combine that with the 360 million compromised MySpace passwords, 117 million from LinkedIn, 65 million from Tumblr, and 32 million from Twitter, and you can almost guarantee that you or someone you know was affected by the mega-breaches announced in recent months.

Being as most people use the same password over and over, these breaches give hackers access to multiple accounts. In a proactive security screen this fall, Netflix found a number of users whose Netflix passwords were compromised as part of another company’s breach. These instances do not simply let attackers tweet on your behalf; they can affect all of your accounts. How many people use the same password for LinkedIn or Yahoo as they do for their corporate email? An unsettling number.

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Here we go again. Friggin' Yahoo. Sigh.

Earlier this year, the company announced that 500 million Yahoo accounts were hacked in a massive breach. This was very upsetting, as it happened back in 2014, meaning users were not made aware for years. Today, an entirely different hack is brought to light. It is even worse than the previously announced breach, as it happened a year earlier (in 2013), and it impacts twice as many accounts -- more than one billion!

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Starting today, the FBI will now have a much easier time hacking just about any computer it wants to. The use of VPNs and other anonymizing software such as Tor meant that it was previously difficult for the Feds to apply for the necessary warrant within the relevant jurisdiction.

Now the location doesn't matter. A change to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure means that investigators can obtain a search warrant regardless of location. The expansion of FBI hacking powers comes after a failed Senate bid to block the changes to Rule 41, and there are fears that it is power that could be abused by Trump.

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German telecommunications giant and T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom was the victim of a cyber-attack over the weekend, which left some 900,000 users affected, the company confirms in a blog post.

This weekend, a hacker (or more likely, hackers) infiltrated the company, and tried to infect users' home routers with malware. Deutsche Telekom said its network was not affected "at any time".

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A data breach has exposed the personal details of more than 130,000 US Navy sailors, including social security numbers.

Rather than being a breach of the Navy's own defences, the data leak came about after a laptop owned by a Hewlett Packard Enterprise employee was compromised. In total, 134,386 current and former sailors are affected by the problem.

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Late yesterday, Three admitted to a breach of its customer databases which potentially put 6 million people at risk. Today the company has spoken out, indicating that far fewer customers were affected than first thought.

In fact, data from just over 130,000 accounts was accessed, with varying levels of access meaning different customer information was exposed. Three says the primary goal of the database breach was to intercept handsets rather than for other purposes, and it stresses that no financial information was stolen.

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