Security was front and center in three major stories in the final days of 2016, starting with Accenture's announcement that it would acquire French identity and access management specialist Arismore. Also, Cisco said its partners were benefiting from its booming security business as the vendor headed into the new year.

270 – Number of employees at Arismore, which solution provider giant Accenture plans to acquire. Accenture, pushing to build a $1 billion security practice, announced plans to acquire Arismore on Dec. 19 in an effort to bolster Accenture's skills around security services, enterprise architecture and change management services.

40 percent – Increase in number of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks mitigated by information service provider Neustar between January and November 2016, compared with the same 11 months the previous year. Neustar blamed vulnerabilities in Internet of Things botnets for part of the jump.

$2 billion – Annual run rate in Cisco Systems' security business in 2016, according to the company. As last year drew to a close, Cisco said its channel partners were benefiting from the vendor's booming security business, with many reporting triple-digit growth in Cisco Security revenue heading into the new year.

32 – Number of patents at the center of a new series of lawsuits filed by Nokia against Apple. Finland-based Nokia alleges infringements within Apple devices that cover d isplay, user interface, chipset, antenna and other technologies. The actions come five years after the two companies settled a previous lawsuit filed by Nokia in 2009. Apple did not immediately respond to a request by CRN for comment. after the latest action.

$400 million – Cisco's managed services revenue goal as part of its broader $1 billion annual sales target for its Meraki solutions line. Cisco is mounting an unprecedented white-label, service-driven initiative through Meraki aimed at providing channel partners with new and unique ways to drive recurring revenues. Cisco said it has opened up APIs and licensing models and improved its Meraki MSP Dashboard with the goal of making networking simpler to install, deploy and manage for both partners and customers.