Holiday time is coming and so are the Holiday cyber-attacks!

Before working in IT, and Cyber Security, I was in the Military, and whenever we were operating during holiday periods, we knew in the back of our minds that if something was going to happen it would happen during holiday time.

The same is true of cyber-attacks and cybercrime. This year we might see more than previous years, already in early October there was an attack on some of America’s largest airports websites.

It isn’t just the Christmas holiday period that we see the increase

• Colonial Pipeline (Mother’s Day Weekend (US))
• Kaseya 4th of July
• Sony and Microsoft Christmas Eve)

Holiday Cyber Attacks, why and what you can do.

The bad guys are aware that during holiday periods there are fewer employees around to look after the infrastructure. Also we are all preoccupied with thoughts of the festive season. So may click on items that we might not normally do.

Security tips:

• Train empolyees in cybersecurity and phisihing awareness.
  User error is still the number one cause of malware attacks, make sure all employees undergo an annual social engineering training.
• What are the internal threats, including scanning and patching software?
  If you are able to make sure these are taken care of this will help in securing your organisation from exploits whilst there is limited supervision during this period.
• Who has access to your Systems.
  Have you implemented a strategy to restrict who has access to data stores, and applications. Only allowing team members access to what they need and having the right levels of privileged access will help.
• Protect the Network
  Although perimeter firewalls will assist in a strong defence, you should also deploy firewalls at the endpoint, and this should block applications and traffic, unless it is required.

Don’t get caught out this year! If you need any help on this please call 01752 546967 and we will be happy to help.