Cybersecurity Tips for the Holiday Season
Written By: Luke Ross
The holiday season brings joy, celebration, and, unfortunately, a significant uptick in cybersecurity threats. While your team focuses on year-end deadlines, holiday shopping, and vacation planning, cybercriminals are working overtime to exploit the chaos. The combination of distracted employees, increased online transactions, and reduced IT staffing creates the perfect storm for cyberattacks. This year, make cybersecurity a priority alongside your holiday preparations. By implementing smart security practices and staying vigilant, you can protect your business, your employees, and your customers from becoming victims of holiday cyber threats.
Why Cybercriminals Love the Holidays
The holiday season isn't just busy for retailers and shoppers; it's prime time for cybercriminals. Understanding why makes it easier to defend against their tactics.
During November and December, online shopping activity explodes. E-commerce transactions surge, payment processing increases, and digital communications multiply. This heightened activity creates more opportunities for attackers to blend malicious emails among legitimate shipping notifications, order confirmations, and promotional offers. When your inbox is flooded with dozens of holiday-related messages daily, it becomes harder to spot the fraudulent ones.
The holidays also bring distraction. Employees juggle work responsibilities with personal tasks like gift shopping, travel planning, and family commitments. This divided attention makes people more likely to click suspicious links, skip security protocols, or make hasty decisions without proper verification. Cybercriminals count on this rushed mindset, crafting urgent messages that pressure recipients to act quickly without thinking critically.
Remote work and travel compound these vulnerabilities. Team members working from home, coffee shops, or airports may use unsecured networks or personal devices that lack enterprise-grade protection. Meanwhile, many businesses operate with skeleton crews during the holidays, meaning security monitoring may be reduced precisely when threats are elevated. Attackers know this and time their campaigns accordingly, launching attacks when they're most likely to go unnoticed or when response times will be slower.
Common Holiday Cyber Threats
Recognizing the tactics cybercriminals use during the holidays is your first line of defense. Here are the most prevalent threats to watch for this season:
Phishing Scams and Business Email Compromise
Phishing scams dominate the holiday threat landscape, with attackers impersonating popular retailers, shipping companies, and payment processors through emails that appear to confirm orders, provide tracking information, or alert you to delivery problems.
Gift Card Fraud
Gift card scams exploit the popularity of these convenient presents, with criminals tampering with physical cards in stores, stealing activation codes, or sending fake gift card offers online that can result in chargebacks and financial losses for businesses.
Public Wi-Fi Vulnerabilities
Public Wi-Fi networks in shopping centers, airports, and cafes become hunting grounds during the holiday rush as cybercriminals set up fake hotspots or intercept data on legitimate but unsecured networks, capturing passwords, financial information, and other sensitive data.
Ransomware Attacks
Ransomware groups specifically target the holiday period, knowing that businesses operating with reduced staff may be more likely to pay ransoms to restore operations quickly during peak shopping season.
Fake Charity Scams
Fake charity scams proliferate as people feel generous during the giving season, with fraudulent organizations soliciting donations through professional-looking websites and emotional appeals that steal both financial information and charitable contributions.
Understanding these threats helps you recognize suspicious activity and respond appropriately before damage occurs.
Protecting Your Personal Digital Life
While businesses need robust security measures, individuals also play a crucial role in cybersecurity. Here's how to protect yourself during the holiday season.
Strong, unique passwords remain fundamental to security. Never reuse passwords across multiple accounts, especially for important services like email, banking, and shopping sites. Password managers can generate and securely store complex passwords for all your accounts, eliminating the temptation to use weak or repeated credentials because they're easier to remember.
Enable multi-factor authentication on every account that offers it. Your email, financial accounts, social media, and shopping accounts should all require an additional verification step beyond your password. This simple action dramatically reduces your risk of account compromise.
Before clicking any link in an email or text message, verify its legitimacy. Hover over links to see the actual destination URL, and be suspicious of shortened links that hide their true target. If you receive a message about a package delivery or account problem, go directly to the company's official website rather than clicking the provided link. This extra step takes only a few seconds but can prevent credential theft or malware infection.
Shop only on secure websites indicated by HTTPS in the URL and a lock icon in your browser. Never enter payment information on sites that lack these security indicators. Be especially cautious with deals that seem too good to be true; they often are. Criminals create fake shopping sites offering incredible discounts to steal your credit card information.
Avoid using public Wi-Fi for any transactions involving sensitive information. If you must use public networks, use a VPN to encrypt your connection, or better yet, use your phone's cellular data instead. Save your online shopping and banking for secure, trusted networks.
Keep all your devices and software updated with the latest security patches. These updates often address newly discovered vulnerabilities that cybercriminals actively exploit. Enable automatic updates when possible, so you're protected without having to remember manual installations.
Maintain healthy skepticism toward unexpected emails, even if they appear to come from known retailers or services. Legitimate companies rarely ask you to verify account information, update payment details, or resolve problems through unsolicited emails. When in doubt, contact the company directly using official contact information from their website, not the information provided in the suspicious message.
Monitor your financial accounts and credit card statements regularly throughout the holiday season. Catching fraudulent transactions quickly limits damage and makes resolution easier. Report any suspicious activity to your financial institution immediately.
Essential Cybersecurity Tips for Businesses
Protecting your business during the holidays requires proactive measures and heightened awareness across your organization. Implement these essential practices to keep your company secure:
1. Conduct Holiday-Specific Security Training
Start by training your team on holiday-specific cybersecurity threats, conducting brief training sessions, or sending awareness communications that highlight phishing tactics, suspicious email characteristics, and proper verification procedures using real examples.
2. Strengthen Email Security Protocols
Strengthen your email security protocols before the holiday rush begins by implementing advanced filtering to catch sophisticated phishing attempts and establishing clear procedures for verifying unusual requests, particularly those involving financial transactions or sensitive data access.
3. Implement Multi-Factor Authentication
Multi-factor authentication provides critical protection beyond passwords alone, adding a verification layer that stops attackers even if they've stolen credentials through phishing, and should be required for all remote access, email accounts, financial systems, and administrative privileges.
4. Maintain Continuous System Monitoring
Continuous system monitoring becomes even more important during the holiday season, so implement automated monitoring tools that alert you to suspicious activity, unusual login attempts, or potential breaches, with clear escalation procedures to ensure incidents get addressed quickly.
5. Secure Payment Systems
For businesses handling customer transactions, securing payment systems is non-negotiable by ensuring compliance with payment card industry standards, using encryption for all financial data, and regularly testing your security controls.
6. Prepare Your Incident Response Plan
Having an incident response plan prepared means you're ready to act quickly if a security incident occurs, with Kotman Technology available to help initiate and coordinate the process, working closely with law enforcement, cybersecurity specialists, investigators, insurance providers, and other necessary parties.
7. Maintain Regularly Tested Backups
Maintain regular, tested backups of all critical business data since the holidays are prime time for ransomware attacks, and having clean, accessible backups stored offline or in immutable storage is your best defense against paying ransoms or losing vital information.
8. Limit Access Privileges
Limit access privileges during high-risk periods by applying the principle of least privilege, ensuring employees and contractors only have access to the systems and data they need for their specific roles, with temporary holiday workers having especially restricted access.
These measures work together to create a comprehensive security posture that protects your business during the vulnerable holiday period.
What to Do If You're Compromised
Despite best efforts, breaches can still occur. Knowing how to respond quickly minimizes damage.
Recognize the warning signs: unauthorized transactions, account lockouts, emails you didn't send, or notifications about password changes you didn't initiate. Trust your instincts; if something seems wrong with your account or device, investigate immediately rather than dismissing concerns.
Take immediate action to secure compromised accounts. Change passwords for affected accounts and any other accounts using the same password. Enable multi-factor authentication if it wasn't already active. If financial accounts are involved, contact your bank or credit card company to freeze the accounts and dispute fraudulent transactions.
For businesses, isolate affected systems to prevent malware from spreading. Disconnect compromised machines from your network, but don't shut them down if a forensic investigation might be needed. Notify your IT team or security provider immediately so they can assess the scope of the breach and begin containment procedures.
Document everything related to the incident, including when you first noticed the problem, what you observed, and what actions you took. This documentation helps with investigation, insurance claims, and regulatory reporting if required.
Report the incident to the appropriate authorities. For identity theft or financial fraud, file reports with local law enforcement and the Federal Trade Commission. For business breaches involving customer data, follow your regulatory obligations for disclosure and notification.
Finally, learn from the experience. Analyze how the breach occurred and implement measures to prevent similar incidents. Whether it was clicking a phishing link, using a weak password, or falling for a social engineering tactic, understanding the failure point helps you strengthen your defenses.
Conclusion
The holiday season should be a time of celebration, not stress over cybersecurity threats. By staying vigilant, implementing strong security practices, and knowing how to respond if issues arise, you can protect yourself and your business from holiday hackers. Don't let cybercriminals steal your holiday joy or your data. Make cybersecurity awareness a priority this season, train your team, secure your systems, and approach digital interactions with appropriate caution.
At Kotman Technology, we understand the unique challenges businesses face during the holidays. Our team can help you implement robust security measures, train your staff, and respond quickly if incidents occur. Don't wait until after a breach to prioritize security. Contact us today to ensure your business is protected so you can focus on what matters most during this special time of year. Stay safe, stay secure, and enjoy the festivities with peace of mind.
Kotman Technology has been delivering comprehensive technology solutions to clients in California and Michigan for nearly two decades. We pride ourselves on being the last technology partner you'll ever need. Contact us today to experience the Kotman Difference.