Attorney Kevin McGinty analyzes the potential impact of a Massachusetts judge's unusual decision to allow a class-action lawsuit stemming from a health data breach to proceed, despite a lack of evidence of harm stemming from the incident.

The FFIEC's Cybersecurity Assessment Tool is already being integrated into regulators' cybersecurity examinations, says Gartner analyst Avivah Litan. But the tool has so far led to more confusion than clarity, she says, and must be enhanced in 2016.

Expect rebooted European Union data privacy rules to drive organizations worldwide to begin minimizing the amount of information they collect and store on individuals in 2016, both to protect privacy as well as minimize the impact of data breaches.

In the healthcare sector in 2016, hackers will continue to threaten systems and networks - and possibly medical devices - while federal and state regulators expand and refine their data security enforcement activities.

Boards of directors that figure out how to leverage cybersecurity as a strategic asset will give their organizations a strong competitive advantage, says Lance Hayden of Berkeley Research Group. "Security needs to be part of what the organization uses to competitively differentiate itself."

In the coming months, the Department of Homeland Security will implement a new cyberthreat information sharing law designed to help prevent breaches. But will the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 really make a difference?

The hack of the Office of Personnel Management, revealed in June, represented a turning point. As a result of the cyberattack, breaches became a concern of a wide sphere of government employees and citizens.

Without a doubt, 2015 was the year of the healthcare megabreach and a major turning point for the sector. The hacking incidents are a blaring wake-up call to safeguard patient data.

The breaches of the infidelity online dating service Ashley Madison and toymaker VTech illustrate how cyber intrusions got worse in 2015, thanks to organizations failing to secure private information.

Improving breach detection and defenses involves much more than buying the latest technology, warns security expert Haroon Meer. "We keep moving on as we try to solve new, shiny problems, which we then half solve, but we still haven't completely solved problems that we knew about 20 years ago."