The number of cyberattacks continues to rise and organisations need to come to terms with the fact that traditional approaches to mitigating the effects of malicious attacks may no longer be viable. One of these approaches is to harness the power of big data technology to help companies improve their proactive and reactive cyber-defence capabilities. David White and Annie Tu examine how old approaches may be found wanting and a paradigm based on new defence models can help companies not only stop hackers, but also help to better identify and respond to malicious activities.