The holiday bustle introduces increased cybersecurity risks that organizations must account for. As CISOs, now is the time to ensure your company doesn’t end up in the wrong “gifting” spirit. With greater numbers of employees on leave and heightened email phishing focused on seasonal deals, your attack surface widens during year-end festivities. Protect corporate assets as activity dies down by enacting these cyber safeguards tailored for the holidays.
The closing months of the year introduce amplified cybersecurity risks across the enterprise as organizations wrap up 2023 and prepare for 2024. This year-end period warrants extra vigilance given altered workflows, more employees accessing data remotely during time off, slower response rates over holidays, and generally increased social engineering by external threats seeking to capitalize on these changes.
Verify that your incident response plans are updated to include procedures and contacts to address security events arising during holiday leave rotations. Confirm escalation protocols that specify who handles threats detected during weekends/holidays among rotated backup staff.
As Several employees will be out over holiday breaks, guarantee you have contingency staff listed to cover critical cybersecurity functions (monitoring, access management, etc.) in their absence. Designate personnel to handle an increased load should incidents occur with fewer hands available.
With greater volumes of digital holiday greetings and online shopping promotions, users face amplified social engineering and malware risks via email during the holidays. Scrutinize filtering sensitivity, double sign-off policies for financial transactions, and flag irregular inbound attachments/links to reduce the impact of attacks.
Threat actors exploit slower business operations during the holidays by hitting valuable targets. Conduct refreshed risk assessments focused on sites containing sensitive assets (customer/HR data, financials, intellectual property) that could go overlooked temporarily with employees out.
The hectic year-end period warrants extra cybersecurity precautions that match altered organizational patterns. CISOs should confirm plans address heightened risk exposures specifically arising due to holiday changes in operations and personnel availability when people wish to be merry — but threat actors do not.
Comprehensive ETLM solutions are purpose-built to address security gaps amplified during periods like the holiday season. Let us help you implement temporary access controls, analytical models, and policies tailored for significantly reducing risk, even as you support downtime and remote connectivity for well-deserved staff R&R. Please reach out to schedule a tailored demo.
