This may strike some security professionals as improbable, but a new report from IBM suggests that overall IT security situation may actually be improving.

When it comes to electronic healthcare records (EHR) there is always a lot of debate about the security of the IT systems used to house these records. After all, it’s hard to hack into an office where all the relevant records in papers locked up in file cabinets. That doesn’t mean those records, however, are secure by any means. With the going rate for a medical record on the black market being about $50, you can imagine the temptation some insiders might experience when it comes to selling those records.

According to a recent report from the researchers at Blue Coat Systems nearly two-thirds of that security attacks that IT organizations are likely to see in 2012 will come from known malware networks. In fact, Blue Coat researchers found that out of the 500 malware networks and subnets that it regularly tracks the top five sources are from malware networks with names such as Shnakule, Glomyn, Cavka, Naargo and Cinbric.

Nothing is ever quite as random as it seems. There are patterns to be discovered in almost everything we do and security is no exception. The challenge is deploying software that not only can identify those patterns, but also ultimately share that intelligence with other systems and applications in a way that is actionable.

As enterprise IT gets more complex figuring out exactly where the latest security flashpoint is has become increasingly more difficult.