For those of you who maybe just thought that data breaches were only happening against US companies, and only by a certain country as the culprit, we wanted to remind you that this certainly isn’t so.

In fact, just in the last several weeks, breaches against major companies in the UK, Australia, Japan, Kenya, Korea, China and others have come to light. Sources of attacks show evidence of criminal groups working from the US, Brazil, Northern Africa, the Middle East, Russia and Asia among others. Just follow the data for a few weeks, and it quickly becomes clear that this is a GLOBAL problem and is multi-directional.

Even loose alliances seem to come and go amongst these criminal groups. They often steal data, talent, techniques, tools and resources from each other. They work together on one deal, while treating each other as competitors in other deals simultaneously. The entire underground is dynamic, shifting in players, goals and techniques on almost moment by moment basis. What works now spreads, and then gets innovated.

This rapidly changing landscape makes it hard for defenders to fight against the bleeding edge. So much so, in fact, that doing the basics of information security and doing them well, seems to be far more effective than trying to keep up with the latest 0-day or social engineering techniques.

That said, next time you read a report that seems to cast the data breach problem as a US issue versus the big red ghost, take a breath. Today, everyone is hacking everyone. That’s the new normal…