Cyber security vulnerabilities must be monitored and addressed all year round, including the busiest seasons. For most businesses, the most hectic, busy periods will be around the holidays – consider the 10s of millions of visits that eCommerce websites receive on Black Friday alone. And with the holiday season, businesses have to be wary of holiday crime, much of which is increasingly taking place online.
Cybercrime tends to spike around the holidays, with studies indicating that financial phishing can spike by as much as 9.5% around the new year. This piece will explore the reasons for increased holiday hacks, along with the need for strong cyber security measures at all times.
Business is busyness!
Businesses are generally under a lot more pressure to perform during the holidays, having to move more units at promotional prices, often with less staff on hand to manage the increased demand. Human, physical and digital resources are often stretched thin around this time of year, leading to vulnerability in cyber security systems.
The most common cyber attacks during the holiday period
UK businesses have experienced around 8 million cyber crimes in the last year, with the most common form being Phishing scams – attacks based around false links that then steal valuable information from victims. Of course, with the abundance of holiday promotions and inquiries taking place during these periods, phishing increases significantly.
Other common forms of online holiday crime include:
- Identity theft
- Ransomware
- Fake eCommerce websites
- SQL injections
- AI-aided attacks
Any and all of these attacks could cause catastrophic business and personal losses, which is why it’s important to keep an eye out for telltale signs of attempted attacks.
Common indicators of cyber attacks include:
Suspicious login activity –
- Ex-employees or unfamiliar parties trying to access the system
- People logging in from two different, distant locations at once
- Logins recorded at strange or unusual times
Multi-factor authentication being disabled or attempted
Brute force attacks – multiple guess & attempts to login traditionally
These are all clear signs that your organisation is under attack. Ideally, you don’t want things to go that far, calling for rigorous security measures to be taken.
Essential measures to reduce holiday cybercrime
It’s important to prepare your organisation with some digital fortitude – this will help keep the holiday opportunists at bay. Some tried and tested methods of reducing the potential impacts of cyber attacks include:
- Implementing highly robust multi-factor authentication models
- Self assessing your business for Cyber Essentials certification
- Regularly training and updating your staff for awareness
- Securing your networking with reputable firewall & antivirus technology
- Encrypting all sensitive data across your business’s hardware
- Hiring a cyber security team to enact penetration testing
- Installing data-leakage prevention software for detecting breaches
- Having your digital infrastructure professionally assessed and audited
- Employing some Dark Web Monitoring services
The holidays are always going to be stressful for the people providing the products and services that make them so special for the public, however, they don’t need to include the added pressure of fighting off digital thugs. By maintaining your head on a swivel and implementing plenty of essential measures, you can trust that your holidays will be happy!