The IT Nerd

As the holiday season approaches, organizations and employees take a well-deserved break, but threat actors do not; instead, seizing the opportunity to target businesses and individuals with phishing scams, data breaches, ransomware and other cyberattacks – all this at a high season for ecommerce and mirth. In fact, data breaches have already exposed more than 422 million records worldwide during Q3 of 2024 alone.

Christian Geyer, CEO and Founder at Actfore, offers Five Crucial Insights and Tips to keep organizations and their employees secure and ‘merrily’ on their way this holiday season. 

• High Season for Phishing Emails and Scams: Phishing scams continue to be one of the most common forms of cybercrime, especially during the busy holiday shopping season. Specifically in this season, many scams target employees’ professional email accounts with fake information and scams in a ploy to gain personal information. Organizations should train employees to recognize phishing attempts year-round but conducting a refresher on what to look for this season is highly recommended. These scams can often appear as unsolicited emails, text messages, package delivery updates, or receipts from online retailers like Amazon or shipping companies such as FedEx.
• Heightened Risks of Mixing Business with Pleasure: The cross-contamination of personal and professional activities drastically increases during the holiday season opening potential opportunities for threat actors. The mixing of business and personal accounts and information, drastically increases attack vulnerability because it adds yet another propped-open-door to businesses and their sensitive information. Generally speaking, it is best to encourage (or enforce) separation of employee’s personal and professional digital trails and accounts. For example, it is best practice to refrain from adding one’s business postal address for personal shopping deliveries or refraining from creating doctor’s (medical practice) portal profiles with one’s business email address.
• Trust in Snapshot Backups: Snapshots, which capture data at specific points in time, are essential for quickly restoring business after a breach incident. During the holiday season, when cyberattacks spike, any minute you can reduce from business downtime due to a cyber incident is critical. So, keeping up with your snapshots, and as some practice, increasing your snapshot rate can make huge impact. it’s critical to ensure cloud backups are up-to-date and reliable, offering a secure point of recovery in case of a breach.
• Prepare for Ransomware: Ransomware surge during the holidays. Regularly updated snapshots can mitigate data loss, and even reduce the likelihood of needing to pay a ransom. With up-to-date backups in place, organizations can reduce or avoid prolonged business down-time negotiating with attackers or paying for recovery.
• Create a Response Plan and Playbook: A well-prepared post-breach response plan is crucial. Organizations should develop a playbook that outlines clear steps for managing a breach, including contact information for forensics vendors, legal counsel, and cyber insurance carriers. Key stakeholders and teams should be notified, and the playbook should be printed and easily accessible in case digital systems go down.

This entry was posted on December 3, 2024 at 10:32 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Actfore. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.