As the news surrounding the number of people affected by the OPM breach worsens, the importance of cyberthreat intelligence (CTI) technologies has been magnified. Since October 2014, CTI vendors have raised $102.5 million, and there have been three acquisitions. Over the next 24 to 36 months, Forrester expects the flurry of fundraising to continue and, over the next 18 months, expects acquisitions to double or triple.

Capitalizing on this market is not a slam dunk for vendors, many of whom claim to have “threat intelligence” — but the term is woefully overloaded. What some refer to as threat intelligence is really threat data: data generated from cybersecurity vendors’ endpoints, applications, and network security devices. Forrester expects vendors in this nascent market to use acquisitions to deliver a more complete CTI offering.