According to ABI Research the global threat and vulnerability management (VM) market is set to increase from 2015 revenues of $5.8 billion to $8.6bn in 2020 due to "nefarious" attacks driving growth.

Key threat and VM market drivers are the cloud and big data. The analyst points out vulnerability assessment (VA) as a key component of a VM program, and as such the VA market is forecast to reach revenues of $1.4bn in 2016 before growing to $2.1bn by 2020.

“There is increasing market demand for vulnerability management solutions, like the IBM QRadar Security Intelligence Platform, Barracuda Vulnerability Manager, AlienVault Unified Security Management solution and Rapid7 Nexpose 6.0,” ABI says. “The ideal VM solution is one that integrates well with 3rd-party technologies and includes capabilities for asset management, configuration management, patch management, VA, remediation, reporting and monitoring.”

The global security appliance market had a bumper 2015, IDC reports-- annual revenues total $10.6 billion, a 9.9% increase, while shipments reach a record high of 2.33 million units with 8.1% growth.

EMEA accounts for 26% of WW 2015 revenues with an annual increase of 2.9% compared to 2014.

The last quarter of the year was also positive-- global revenues are worth $2.95bn (a 9.3% Y-o-Y increase) and shipments are up by 6.2% Y-o-Y to 635281 units. \

The typically secure Mac platform has been hit by a ransomware-- version 2.90 of the Transmission BitTorrent client is actually infected with malware, and poses nasty consequences to users.

According to Palo Alto Networks security researchers this is the first functioning example of such malware (specifically "KeRanger") to attack OS X. Thankfully the Transmission developers quickly realised the situation, and users are urged to use the Activity Monitor to delete KeRanger and related processes.

In addition, Apple has already revoked a "a digital certificate from a legitimate Apple developer that enabled the rogue software to install on Macs."

An encrypted iPhone stands in the way of the FBI investigation over the 2 December 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting-- one Apple refuses to unlock in the name of protecting user data.

To put a long story short, following the discovery of ISIS involvement in the San Bernardino attack the FBI found an iPhone belonging to one of the attackers. As law enforcement agencies tend to, the FBI wants to go through the data inside the device, but it requires a means to break the iPhone's built-in encryption, specifically by modifying iOS security to allow unlimited unlocking attempts, as well as allowing "brute force" attacks to discover the correct PIN.