In 2018, the cyber threat landscape changed significantly. The most important threat agent groups, namely cyber-criminals and state-sponsored actors have further advanced their motives and tactics. Monetization motives contributed to the appearance of crypto-miners in the top 15 cyber threats.
Advances in defense have also been assessed: law enforcement authorities, governments, and vendors were able to further develop active defense practices such as threat agent profiling and the combination of cyber threat intelligence (CTI) and traditional intelligence. This led to more efficient identification of attack practices and malicious artifacts, leading in turn to more efficient defense techniques and attribution rates.
