Holiday season is approaching, and this is the time of giving, excitement, joy, celebration and rest - which is the perfect time for cyber grinches to take advantage of holiday season. Here are some security scenarios to be aware of during this festive season:

• Holiday cheer and employees get too distracted One might find it very difficult to follow technical guidelines and practices established by their security teams with all the Christmas shopping, planning, and cleaning in mind. On top of that, there’s a lot of year-end deadlines and planning to wrap up the year.

• Holiday breaks mean short staffed IT and Security Operations teams While everyone is busy celebrating with family and friends and enjoying their work breaks, cyber criminals are working hard to exploit any vulnerabilities and steal personal information as much as they can. Unfortunately, Christmas has become the peak time for hackers to launch cyber-attacks. This means hackers expect that there will be less people on the security team which makes organisations less prepared to handle cyberattacks if they occur. 

• “I’ll give you a FAKE discount you cannot refuse” or “Our company is giving you a FAKE amount of annual bonus” These emails may look convincing and employees would often get too excited to claim and can be lured into clicking links, emails, or websites they otherwise wouldn’t. Don’t get tricked into these phishing campaigns.

• Online Shopping gets Tricky As online shopping has increased, so has the volume of hacking attempts and attacks at the end of the year. Sophisticated phishing campaigns that set up fake check out pages and websites to capture card and personal information have popped in the last few years, as have e-commerce storefronts that appear to offer great deals but are actually just collection sites for hackers to gather payment cards and other information on consumers.

As we start winding down for the Holidays, IT leaders should ensure that their employees need to be extra vigilant to keep their companies safe and security measures are top notch.

For maximum safety, companies should invest in reliable backup solutions and partner up with certified cybersecurity companies and take a decentralised approach to asset/ data security in order to ensure strict access control and create an additional layer of protection.

Cyber Node offers an extensive range of Managed Cybersecurity solutions and services, helping to protect individuals and organisations from data breaches and other cyber threats. Get in touch with us today to discuss your cyber security strategy!

We may take the holidays off, but cybercriminals do not. Don’t let cyber criminals ruin your holiday.