There's a real buzz in the industry around artificial intelligence, machine learning, automated network monitoring and user and entity behaviour analytics (UEBA) at the moment. Artificial intelligence (AI) is not a new concept, but it appears that the mere mention of it conjures up an immediate element of fear amongst many. The reality is that AI and skilled individuals can be combined to create the most important aspect in an organisation's defence in the war on cybercrime and here's why. More on User and Entity Behaviour Analytics (UEBA) UEBA uses advanced analytics to baseline network activity to identify malicious behaviour from external sources, as well as insider threats. It does this by automatically learning what is normal based on typical activity and then, using proprietary algorithms, assigns risk scores to potential malicious behaviour.

Businesses and consumers alike have been affected by the almost daily threats of data breaches and the impact of these have on a continuous basis. Will such threats enable identity fraud, send a business under or even give adversaries further power to conduct ever more dangerous attacks? Michael Sutton, CISO at Zscaler, has crafted his top five predictions for the year ahead and what this will mean for the threat landscape. "Offensive Offense – Increasingly, motivations for offensive nation state sponsored attacks have gone into a new realm and have been driven primarily as an effort to undermine the credibility of another government or in some cases influence public sentiment. The Director of National Intelligence went so far as to publicly accuse the Russian Government of the attack on the DNC and others have openly speculated that they too were behind the compromise of Hillary Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta's inbox. In light of such aggressive and direct medaling in the political affairs of another nation, some in the intelligence community are suggesting that the US should return the favour. This is a troubling notion. If we enter an era where nations are actively conducting offensive cyber attacks with the primary goal of embarrassing their foe by leaking documents online, many innocent victims will be caught in the crossfire. It's one thing to conduct cyber espionage covertly to get a leg up on the competition either from a military or economic perspective, but it is an entirely different situation when private documents are being handed over to Wikileaks. Given current political tensions, the precedent that has already been set and the aggressive tone of the incoming US administration, it's likely that 2017 will see the US and other nations step into this cyber mudslinging contest."

By 2020 it is estimated that the global internet of things (IoT) market will have grown to more than $1.7 trillion. According to a study by Gartner, by the end of this year alone the number of IoT devices on the planet will have reached more than 4 billion. It is not unreasonable to suggest that by the end of this decade, these devices will outnumber humans. Such exponential growth has facilitated two major developments. It has boosted technology markets around the world and it has warped the landscape of cyberspace.