The holiday season has officially arrived! Unfortunately, so have uninvited guests: cybercriminals. As individuals and businesses gear up for increased purchases, holiday parties, and quality time with family, cybercrime risks increase as bad actors use those distractions as an opportunity.
From phishing attacks and ransomware to supply chain attacks, cybercriminals work overtime to spoil the joy of the holidays for your business. Additionally, remote work and a busy workforce can add extra layers of complication, leading you to a perfect recipe for a holiday disaster.
Enhancing your physical and digital cybersecurity measures is essential to keeping your business safe and secure this holiday season.
Increased Cyberattacks During the Holidays
Cybersecurity Awareness Month wrapped up in October just in time for businesses to shift their focus to the holidays—often their busiest time. From increased online activity to less time in the office, the holiday season can pose a significant threat to businesses and data security.
With employees spending quality time with their families or taking vacations, increased online presence due to shopping, and businesses focusing on end-of-year goals, businesses are often more exposed to cybercrime during the holiday season. Knowing how to prepare and defend your business as the holidays begin is necessary for companies looking to keep customer and business data safe. Knowing how to protect your business always starts with identifying potential threats.
Most Common Cyberattacks During the Holidays
It’s no secret that cybercrime is on the rise. With innovations in AI, cybercriminals are getting more creative and effective in attacking your business. Proactively protecting your business this holiday season starts with understanding the most common threats that companies face during the holiday season.
- Phishing attacks: According to cyberint.com, phishing attacks increase nearly 50% during the holidays. These attacks focus on taking advantage of people’s distractions during the holidays. Scammers send out fake emails, texts, and calls to try to gain access to valuable personal or business data through seemingly legitimate links.
- Ransomware: Cybercriminals will often target companies with under-staffed IT teams during the holidays with malicious attempts to gain access to valuable data and hold it for ransom. Nearly 35% of all successful ransomware attacks originate through a phishing attack.
- Data Breaches: With remote workers in abundance, attackers focus on weak endpoint security. They target employees using insecure networks or previously leaked credentials to find back doors into valuable business data.
- Deepfake Fraud: The sophistication of AI is empowering cyber criminals to use deepfake technology to commit corporate fraud. With fewer IT staff and distracted employees during the holidays, deepfakes significantly threaten business data and finances, especially when more work is done asynchronously over the holidays.
- Malware and Data Theft: Cybercriminals attack individuals through gift card scams and fake apps to install malware onto devices in an attempt to steal valuable data. Using personal devices to access corporate accounts without proper management can lead to compromised credentials with access to sensitive business data and systems.
The holiday season is a prime time for cybercriminals to attack your business. With increased AI capabilities and new technologies constantly being introduced, businesses must stay vigilant in defending their company’s data.
Best Practices to Keep Your Business and Employees Safe
No one wants their holidays spoiled by data leaks, damaged reputation, and financial loss. Implement these strategies to keep your business running smoothly throughout the holidays.
Secure employee devices
With remote work prevalent and more workers taking time off or working remotely during the holidays, keeping your business safe starts with securing employee devices. Some of the best ways to ensure that your employees are staying secure include:
- Use MFA: Multi-Factor Authentication (also known as Two-Factor Authentication) adds an additional layer of security by requiring multiple verification steps before sensitive data can be accessed, deterring cybercriminals from accessing devices.
- Use a VPN: If your employees work remotely during the holidays, ensure they have a VPN installed on their devices to protect them from insecure networks that provide an easy access point for cybercriminals. Depending on your business compliance needs, this may be a custom VPN configuration as the exclusive means of accessing company systems remotely.
- Ensure software and security updates: Keeping device software up to date helps ensure that previous weak spots in security have been patched, keeping cybercriminals at bay.
- Use Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions: EDR solutions help your company identify and respond to threats in real-time, minimizing damage and exposure.
Enhance physical security measures in-office
With reduced IT staff and closures for holiday time off, your in-office devices could be left exposed if not protected effectively. Effective ways to keep your data and devices secure when the office is closed include:
- Security cameras: Investing in physical security measures such as security cameras effectively deter crime and increase response time to attacks.
- Reduce office access and services: Canceling unnecessary services during the holidays—such as cleaning services—and reducing employee access during closed hours ensures that valuable data and hardware remain safe.
If you need renovations or remodeling done to your office during the holidays, pay an employee or security guard to be present during construction hours.
- Secure or destroy physical notes: Require employees to lock up or destroy physical notes containing sensitive business information, such as passwords, access codes, financial data, etc.
- Use offsite data backup: An offsite data storage service can provide your business with an additional layer of security in case of an emergency or natural disaster.
Increase and emphasize employee awareness
Human error is the number one cause of data leaks and breaches. Enhancing employee awareness of phishing attacks is always good practice but is extremely important during the holidays when people are more distracted than ever. Here are a few ways to increase employee cybersecurity awareness
- Hold employee trainings: Cover cybersecurity best practices, such as MFA, password managers, identifying threats, and remote work safety.
- Have a cybersecurity meeting prior to the start of the holiday season: This will help get the whole team on the same page by reminding employees about and implementing company cybersecurity policies.
- Engage in employee cybersecurity training with a third party: Consider going through phishing simulations to help employees better identify what a phishing attack looks like.
Backup Critical Data
With increased cybersecurity threats throughout the holiday season, your business needs to have a secure backup of critical business data in case of a data breach or data loss.
Whether you choose the cloud, on-site, or hybrid, your business must have a backup to guarantee it can move forward after a disaster. Additionally, it is critical that your company maintains a regular backup schedule and securely encrypts the data.
Create a Holiday Cybersecurity Plan
Work with your IT team to create a checklist of essential cybersecurity measures as the holiday season ramps up. Then, communicate with your employees the importance of being vigilant about cybersecurity during the holiday season and implement enhanced cybersecurity measures.
Additionally, create an emergency response plan that defines the exact steps your business should take if a data breach or loss occurs.
Partnering with a Managed Service Provider
Keeping your company safe during the holidays takes time and effort that your business may be unable to spare. By working with a trusted managed service provider (MSP), your business can offload the responsibility of keeping data safe to IT experts. The best MSP for your business will deliver top-tier cybersecurity measures and training that fit your business’s exact needs, keeping it safe year-round, not only during the holidays.
At 99Ten, we help protect your business from cybercriminals using advanced AI-powered solutions, continuous monitoring, and expert guidance to provide the peace of mind you need to focus on what you do best—growing your organization. Don’t wait for cyberattackers to ruin your holiday season. Take action today to proactively defend against cybercriminals and keep your business and employee data safe. Schedule a comprehensive cybersecurity assessment today to discover your strengths and weaknesses and how we can enhance your security.