The holiday season gives your business a chance to boost sales and close out the year strong, but unfortunately it also brings a significant spike in cyberthreats. Cybercriminals know that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often have to operate with leaner staff and distracted teams during this busy period of higher profits.
If your business isn’t prepared, a single phishing email, malware infection, or account compromise can lead to costly downtime when you can least afford it. So, let’s take a look at how you can strengthen your cybersecurity before the holiday rush to ensure your systems stay operational, your customers stay protected, and your reputation remains intact.
Why is cyber risk higher for SMBs during the holiday season?
SMBs face increased cyber risk during the holidays for several reasons.
- Reduced staffing due to vacations means incidents may go unnoticed or unresolved, and attackers take advantage of these gaps
- Employee behavior shifts to more risky and unsecure practices, such as working remotely, connecting to public Wi-Fi in airports or hotels, or using unfamiliar devices outside the safety of your office network.
- Cybercriminals launch more phishing campaigns during the holidays, disguising malicious messages to blend in with the flood of order confirmations, shipping alerts, holiday promotions, and charity requests into inboxes this time of year.
Long story short: During the holidays, it’s easier for cybercriminals to attack you and they stand more to gain.
A 5-step holiday cybersecurity checklist for SMBs
Before the holiday surge hits (usually around Thanksgiving), use this checklist to strengthen your cybersecurity and reduce exposure to seasonal attacks.
1. Enforce multifactor authentication (MFA) everywhere it’s available
MFA provides a powerful layer of protection by requiring another login credential in addition to a password to access systems, such as one-time password, an authenticator app, or even a fingerprint.
MFA helps prevent unauthorized access even if credentials are stolen through phishing or leaked in a breach, which is much more likely during the holidays for the reasons mentioned above. This feature is free and built into virtually all critical business applications, financial systems, email accounts, and remote access tools, so require MFA by default for all employees.
2. Patch and update all systems before everyone leaves
Cybercriminals often exploit known vulnerabilities in outdated software, so if your systems aren’t patched, you’re giving attackers an easy entry point.
Update your operating systems, cloud apps, firewalls, mobile devices, and point-of-sale systems before traffic increases or employees go remote for the holidays. You might not get another chance to patch everyone’s devices and software until the holiday rush is over, so do it well in advance.
3. Strengthen endpoint security on all devices
Holiday travel means more laptops and mobile devices leaving the office and connecting to your central systems from strange new Wi-Fi networks. Therefore, before everyone leaves the office on vacation, ensure every device connected to your network has advanced endpoint protection, including antivirus, threat detection, and device encryption.
Most importantly though, look into mobile device management (MDM) solutions. These programs allow you track company devices wherever they go and give you the ability to remotely wipe data if a device is lost or stolen.
4. Train your team to spot holiday phishing scams
Phishing surges during the holiday season, and SMBs need employees who can spot suspicious messages quickly. Provide security awareness training on topics that include:
- Holiday-themed email scams
- Fake shipping notifications
- Malicious QR codes and links
- Social engineering through text and chat apps
Human error is still the primary cause of data breaches, so a well-trained team is one of the most effective defenses against seasonal cybercrime.
5. Confirm your data backups and incident response plan
The higher rate of attacks during the holidays means that despite your efforts, an attack may still sneak through. You need to be able to bounce back fast, so verify that your backups are current, stored securely, and tested regularly for restorability. Just as important, ensure your business continuity plan is ready with who to contact, what systems to isolate, and how communication should flow if something goes wrong.Contact SpectrumWise for a FREE cybersecurity assessment and find out where your IT systems are vulnerable before the holiday rush increases your risks.