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Cybercriminals are especially active during the holiday season. Do you know how to stay safe while shopping online and planning for your holidays?

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…”—or, at least, it should be. Unfortunately, if cybercriminals get their way, it won’t be. 

Do you understand why cyber security is especially important during the holiday season?

Cyber Criminal Activity Skyrockets During The Holidays

Cybercriminals routinely launch attacks on holiday weekends because it’s when businesses are most vulnerable—Kaspersky noted a 9% increase in activity during this time of year.

Why? Staff members are away from the office, doing their best not to think about work. IT support is less available than usual. Many businesses are essentially open targets. 

This strategy is highly effective for cyber criminals—just consider the track record so far:

• The Kaseya ransomware attack took place on the July 4 weekend
  
  
• The 2013 Target hack was executed over Thanksgiving weekend
  
  
• Last year’s SolarWinds breach took place just days before Christmas

Hackers also use this time of year as an opportunity to wreak havoc at the consumer level as well. With so many modern high profile gifts relying on some form of networking (video game consoles, smart technology, etc.), Christmas morning is the perfect time for cybercriminals to temporarily tank the stock of a company like Sony or Microsoft. In 2014, for example, hackers took down the gaming networks for PlayStation and Xbox, making hundreds of thousands of gifted video game consoles essentially useless. 

Cybercriminals are preparing for their holiday hacks as you read this. Are you sure your business is prepared to stay secure until you get back from your holidays?

The Online Marketplace Is Especially Vulnerable

A key area for cybercriminal activity during the holidays is the online marketplace. In recent years, a majority of retailers have begun offering online shopping options for their customers. As the use of these e-Commerce platforms rises during the holiday season, cybercriminals target these systems at a much higher rate. 

e-Commerce solutions are often highly vulnerable to malicious third parties. By compromising JavaScript code, cybercriminals can deploy a range of different attacks, including:

• Cross-site scripting (XSS)
• Form jacking
• Cryptojacking
• Malicious ad injection
• Data skimming

Key Threats During The Holiday Season

The three primary types of threats you need to understand are:

• Denial-of-Service/Distributed Denial-of-Service (DoS and DDoS) Attacks: This method floods your business’ systems with multiple data requests, resulting in lags and crashes. This type of attack can be deployed to take down your website during your most profitable time of year.
  
  
• Malicious Bots: Bots can be deployed to execute a wide range of actions, from stealing data on your business and your customers to disrupting key processes in your online shopping systems. Cybercriminals may use bots to perform any of the following types of online fraud:
  
  
• Price scraping
• Content scraping
• Scalping
• Denial of inventory
  
  
• Website Attacks: Retail websites suffered more attacks than other websites during Q4 of 2020. Cybercriminals will directly attack your website to breach your customers’ financial data. Any systems that store credit card info, home addresses and other personal information are high-value targets. 

Double Check Your Cyber Security Before You Go On Holiday

It’s vital that you verify your cyber security posture before you go on holiday with a little help from CyberUnlocked. We offer a robust range of cyber security scanning and management services. 

As a part of our Vulnerability Management services, we will take an unbiased look at your systems to determine where they may be vulnerable to external threats. Our scanning service will identify vulnerabilities linked to SQL injection, DDoS, SSL flaws, data leaks and more. 

Don’t Let Cybercriminals Ruin Your Holiday Season

While the holidays are certainly a time to relax, you don’t want to relax your cyber security. The fact is that it’s big business this time of year for cybercriminals. 

Get in touch with our team to prepare your business for the holidays.