Safeguarding devices during Christmas and New Year Winter Holidays

Winter holidays are everyone’s favorite time, especially for hackers. The holiday season is when people reach out to friends and family. Even cybersecurity admins deserve some much-needed rest, shopping, much on lucrative homemade food. However, the holiday spirit is also the perfect time for cybercriminals to strike when the guards are down. Hacking has transitioned to notorious criminal activities over the years. These bad actors jeopardize organizations and devices and create a chain of chaotic events to extract money from companies worldwide.

Sadly, the Christmas spirit is tainted by hackers and hacking groups as the global holiday season is the peak time for significant cyberattacks. The best example of a cyberattack during Christmas is exploiting the Log4j vulnerability. With the US witnessing maximum ransomware attacks during holidays like Memorial Day, Mother’s day, even SolarWinds cyberattack in December 2020 already speaks volumes of the growing Christmas threats during winters.

Undoubtedly there is an increase in attacks during the holiday seasons, especially during pre and post-Christmas. During the winter holidays and even the New Year, cybercrime incidents have increased to 9%. To overcome the severity of the chaos during the holidays, security admins are on their toes. Even the FBI and CISA have combined their forces to bring “Ransomware Awareness for Holidays and Weekends” to effect.

During the winter holidays, the comfort of the bed, the warmth of the blankets, and a fun time with family could be distracting. When you’re already using vulnerability management, you tend to rely entirely on it without having a concrete plan for what would happen if things go south. Well, things tend to go south as the winter holiday is the best time for cybercriminals to maximize growing revenues. Scheduling scans every day could give you an upper hand to fend off against cyberattacks.

Ransomware attacks alone increase by 30% during holidays compared to year-round attacks. If businesses do not stay vigilant and are less responsive during the holiday season, then they would fall in protecting themselves. Let’s explore the issues at hand!

• Businesses are paused

Winter holidays are lengthier with Christmas and New Year celebrations. Security teams often operate without supervision or concrete plan. Simply put, when the security team is absent or most of them, the IT infrastructure is left open to attacks, vulnerable even. Obviously, this is a golden opportunity for bad actors to take control of the digital infrastructure. Sometimes, it’s not even getting into the infrastructure; instead, if you’re not using good vulnerability management, then you might miss out on spotting malware or a vulnerability in real-time.

Cyberattacks do not happen in a day’s planning; instead, hackers have a plan in motion to see through. If discovering vulnerabilities takes a long time, remediation would fail. Further, keeping away the bad actors is nothing less than a challenging feat!

• Employees are on the move

All of us are accustomed to the hybrid working model due to the pandemic. However, during winter holidays, employees will be traveling to different places and working remotely from a beach in Panama, Hawaii, or a tropical place. Are the Wi-Fi networks in these locations as secure as those connected to an organization’s digital infrastructure?

Connecting to public networks jeopardizes the devices and their employee and private information.

• Malicious links sent to Users through Official Holiday Emails

Winter holidays are best for sale, buying, and gifting of things. With the evolution of the internet and connectivity, attackers can scam your employees with misleading calls, online ads, text messages, phishing emails, among others. Phishing emails have become as sophisticated as winter-themed holiday emails. Sometimes, they are even designed to look as mesmerizing as an order confirmation email from leading e-commerce giants. A single click on the link can lead to a chain of attacks like logged keystrokes from malware, stealing of credentials.

Cybercriminals are stepping up their game, so it’s important to be rational on social media, with emails, and while browsing the internet.

Adapting the best security practices can bring a paradigm shift in cybersecurity. For instance, you can skip clicking on suspicious links. Integrate vulnerability management into a business that would ensure the automated scanning, detecting, and remediating for you!

The inescapable truth is cybercriminals have become quite sophisticated today. There’s only so much that a security team or admins can do to protect an organization’s digital infrastructure. Planning ahead and relying on a vulnerability management system that works better in a hybrid working model could make it easier for everyone to fend off attacks during the holidays.

SecPod SanerNow Vulnerability Management practices a holistic routine with continuous scanning, detection, and remediation in real-time. As the VM offers on-demand continuous scans, SanerNow is more than reliable to scan and monitor all devices and networks in your organization. The technology put together to build SanerNow makes vulnerability management a touchless, continuous, and automated process. From scanning to remediation, you can automate and achieve it all from a single cloud-based console. SanerNow vulnerability management is backed up by the world’s largest vulnerability database with 160,000+ security checks, the industry’s fastest scans in less than 5 minutes, and integrated patch remediation.

While you enjoy your holidays, SanerNow will have your ground covered.

Happy Holidays!

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