Understanding the modern cybercrime landscape

Throughout 2025, HPE observed significant changes in how cybercriminals operate. Analyzing real-world threats, our HPE Threat Labs highlighted an industrialization of the cyber criminals’ methods in its new In the Wild Report, enabling greater scale, speed and structure in their campaigns. They typically use automation and AI to exploit longstanding vulnerabilities, and many have adopted a professional, corporate hierarchy to optimize their efficiency.

Cybersecurity threats today are as menacing as ever for enterprises, as any CISO or CIO can probably confirm. But, digging behind that straightforward statement, there is a much more nuanced, complex cybersecurity landscape at play. This can make it significantly harder to plan, execute, and sustain effective strategies and solutions to protect the network—plus the often valuable—sometimes priceless—data, apps, and assets it transports and stores. But it can be done, with the right philosophy and strategy, and the right tools and insights. We must first understand the contemporary cybersecurity landscape. This understanding can unlock the right strategy and then onward to identify the tools and insights necessary to protect an enterprise’s network effectively. There are five primary factors influencing the landscape, some old, some new, all dynamic. These factors are distinct but often interdependent, both within themselves and with one or more of the others. Another meaningful way of looking at them is “internal” and “external”; as ever, understanding and dealing with what is in your control can also help to navigate and mitigate what is beyond your control. Five key factors influencing today’s dynamic cybersecurity landscape The first factor is predicated on the fundamental reality of an enterprise’s reliance on its network. Most enterprises have already undergone some form of digital transformation and are reaping the day-to-day benefits. This means that the number of people, devices, and things using the network continues to grow; it also means that people’s expectations of the network are higher than ever before – they demand that it does exactly what they need it to do, typically across a proliferation of devices and from multiple locations.

Key points

• Cybersecurity threats today are as menacing as ever for enterprises, as any CISO or CIO can probably confirm.
• But, digging behind that straightforward statement, there is a much more nuanced, complex cybersecurity landscape at play.
• This can make it significantly harder to plan, execute, and sustain effective strategies and solutions to protect the network—plus the often valuable—sometimes priceless—data, apps, and assets it t…
• But it can be done, with the right philosophy and strategy, and the right tools and insights.
• We must first understand the contemporary cybersecurity landscape.