The holiday season is upon us. While employees take time off to be with their families and enjoy some well-deserved rest and recognition, cybersecurity cannot afford to take it easy.
It’s a clear fact that the holiday season is a fertile ground for cybercriminals. While travel might be limited this year owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercriminals aim to take advantage of the laxness and gaps that typically creep into an enterprise’s security framework during this period. These gaps creep in because employees are human beings after all and they have a tendency to let their guard down during the holiday season. Hence, they might not think twice before using public Wi-Fi terminals to access office emails or clicking on links without verifying them.
Cybercriminals are on the prowl in the holiday season
Similarly, the possibility of cybersecurity monitoring intensity dropping during the holiday season is high as a large number of people go on leave, leading to a drop in resources. Fewer resources are assigned to manage the entire monitoring process which makes it much harder to detect and identify suspicious activities or a breach.
Cybercriminals look to exploit exactly this kind of sentiment and pick vacation times as a time to pull off their nefarious activities undetected. For example, a login from a different location by an employee could easily be attributed to the said employee going on holiday and not taken seriously, when in fact, the employee’s credentials have been stolen and are being used for mala fide purposes.
This is precisely the reason why there’s a common truism in cybersecurity – there is no time to relax. Enterprises need to ensure that there is no slip-up in their cybersecurity framework, even during holidays and off-hours.
Set clear expectations
Clear expectations should be set among employees on their usage of personal devices to access official information during the holiday season. An advanced enterprise mobility management solution like Seqrite mSuite should be leveraged to ensure mobile devices used by employees are protected while accessing official data. Employees should be educated well in advance and the message should be reiterated that they need to follow all cybersecurity precautions if they plan to reply to work e-mails while away.
Monitoring of incidents
Monitoring of security incidents is of pronounced importance during this period. Any kind of anomalous or suspicious incident, however minor it may seem, should not be ignored and properly investigated. If there is substantial activity on the enterprise network, that should also raise a flag as it could be a cryptomining attack. Enterprises must also be wary of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). Data espionage is a major threat and enterprises must ensure confidential data including client data is securely stored and not easy to access.
Whether it’s the holiday season or off-hours, Seqrite’s powerful cybersecurity solutions provide enterprises with the confidence to stay secure. The Endpoint Security (EPS) solution offers uninterrupted protection against malicious websites, phishing attacks, etc. while Data Loss Prevention secures confidential data and prevents data leakage. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) & Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) offer advanced protection that proactively detects and prevents all forms of malicious activity, ensuring enterprise systems stay safe during vacation hours.
