Cyberattackers: The Grinches of this Holiday Season

While the holidays are a fun time for families, they can be a challenging time for IT. Cyber attacks have become both more frequent and more sophisticated, so it’s important not only to have security in place but also to know what makes an attack successful. This guide offers tips on how to respond to cyberattacks while staying safe during the holidays and beyond.

Cyberattackers are especially active the week before the Thanksgiving holiday and can sometimes even utilize holidays to mask their attempts. Because of this, it is crucial that organizations take precautions such as conducting a full inventory audit, installing patches and updating their firewall rules. According to a recent report, just over one third of companies were staffed above 33% over the weekend and on holidays. This means fewer eyes looking at security issues as they occur. Of course, malicious actors don’t work 9 AM to 5 PM — which means that they know there are fewer people watching out for their work. Some key steps you can take are:

• Review data logs
• Understand what standard performance looks like in comparison to suspicious or anomalous activity. 
• Employ intrusion prevention systems and automated security alerting systems
• Deploy honeytokens and alert on their usage to detect lateral movement.

Some of the most significant malware attacks in history occurred during the 2016 holiday season. It has now been many years that cyber pros have been battling these types of attacks, so most are understandably on edge these days – and they lack the power to demand that staffing be maintained at normal or close to normal levels.