Thales and Verint have joined forces to publish The Cyberthreat Handbook, a comprehensive guide to the international cybersecurity landscape. The Handbook examines approximately 60 major groups and 490 individual attack campaigns, offering details about the motive, methods, and targets of the world’s most prominent cybercriminals.

The two companies are hoping that the Handbook will help prevent future attacks, arming private and public organizations with better information and detailed profiles about the threats they are most likely to face.

“[The Handbook] is the culmination of many months of research, investigation and painstaking analysis and correlation of relevant data,” said Thales Executive VP Marc Darmon. “It is our duty to understand and describe the techniques employed by cyberattackers so that businesses and organisations are better prepared to detect and anticipate future attacks.”

So who poses the biggest threat? Despite the amount of attention given to financial crimes, 49 percent of the groups in the report are in fact state-sponsored organizations working to steal information from other political targets, while 26 percent are hacktivists advocating for a cause. Only 20 percent are cybercriminals engaged in various forms of fraud, while the remaining five percent are cyberterrorists.

The most common targets are the 12 countries with the highest GDP, and their state and defense capabilities in particular. However, financial institutions and energy and transportation infrastructure are still popular targets.

Attacks against media and health organizations are becoming more common, as are attacks against smaller organizations that devote less resources to cybersecurity. If compromised, those smaller organizations can be used to stage Trojan attacks against larger institutions with better defenses farther up the supply chain.

The report will almost certainly be useful to organizations looking for assistance in the fight against cybercrime. It should also provide a boost to companies that offer cybersecurity products and services, including Thales and Verint. Thales recently outfitted Treezor with cloud-based data protection technology, while Verint received three awards for its Speech Analytics solution.