Winter holidays are approaching. While most people can’t wait to take a break from work and enjoy family gatherings or a well-deserved vacation, remember that the Grinch is out there, waiting to get advantage of your absence.
Why are security risks higher during the holidays?
During the holidays, companies operate at a reduced capacity, implement operational freezes, or shut down entirely. However, it’s during this period that companies need to be more alert, as the risk of cyber attacks rises organically due to a combination of factors:
- Reduced monitoring: With fewer staff for security threats, attacks can go unnoticed, providing an increased vulnerability window.
- Delayed incident response: in case of a security breach or an incident, the response time might be longer, potentially allowing attackers more time to cause damage.
- Unattended updates: Critical security fixes might be delayed if updates or patches are released during the holiday, leaving the system vulnerable to known exploits. In particular, many components of WordPress become quickly outdated.
- Peak in Phishing and Social Engineering attacks: Holidays are a prime time for phishing attacks, when employees are more relaxed and less cautious due to the festive season – after all, don’t we all believe that something good will happen to us at Christmas? The problem is that if it’s too good to be true, it’s probably a scam.
How to mitigate risks
There are a few things that you can do to mitigate the risk of cyber attacks before you leave the office:
- Plan: Ensure security measures, including updates, backups, and security configurations, are in place before the holiday break.
- Create an Emergency Response Plan: Establish a well-defined incident response plan. Train the staff on duty to respond to security incidents during the shutdown and designate emergency contacts and escalation paths well ahead of time.
- Set up automated alerts: Consider using monitoring services or set up automated alerts that notify key personnel of any security incidents.
- Educate employees on phishing: If you haven’t done it before, this is the time to educate your employees on phishing attempts and how to recognize potential security issues.
- Schedule maintenance: if possible, schedule maintenance tasks or updates just before the holiday shutdown to ensure systems are up to date.
The importance of a contingency plan
Maintaining a proactive security stance and having contingency plans can significantly reduce the risks associated with reduced personnel during holiday periods. Remember: hackers never sleep… and neither should your security!
