How to Prevent Hacking During the Holiday Season

The holidays are a busy time for cyber attackers. They rely on distracted workers and lax security systems to breach an organization’s defenses. Then, they deploy ransomware or perform smash-and-grab operations on as much information as they can get their hands on. Either way, the goal is the same: profiting from a brief moment of weakness in your cybersecurity defenses.

If you’re wondering how to prevent hacking during this hectic time of year, Lookout is here to help. This guide will teach you about the most common intrusion methods malicious actors use and give you common-sense knowledge to fight back, no matter how busy the holiday season gets.

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Cybersecurity holiday season challenges

Cyber attacks are widespread during the holidays. In fact, one study found that almost 90% of ransomware attacks happened during a holiday or weekend. Malicious actors choose these busy moments to launch their attacks for a few reasons.

• Heightened e-commerce demand: Everyone’s looking for the perfect gifts for friends and family, and they’re often shopping for the best deals, too. This creates an ideal opportunity for malicious actors to lure shoppers with fake promotional emails or ads for too-good-to-be-true prices on the season's hottest products and the effects can be devastating. At best, these attacks will merely drain your co-workers’ bank accounts. At worst, they could cause employees to unwittingly hand over credentials that lead attackers directly into the heart of your organization’s infrastructure.
• Increased online activity: Increased e-commerce demand also means more people are online, pushing servers to their limits. Clever hackers can use this increase in traffic as an opportunity to overwhelm an organization’s servers or sneak in undetected. 
• Employee distraction: As employees sprint toward holiday break, they’re trying to balance the demands of their jobs against their personal planning needs. With so many things on their plate, malicious emails or suspicious network activity can easily slip through the cracks,

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How cyber attackers exploit these weaknesses during hacking season

Malicious actors use several tried and true tactics throughout the year to breach secure systems and steal organizations’ data. They’ll lean even more heavily on these tactics during the holiday season because they’re easy to scale across thousands of potential victims:

• Phishing attacks: Malicious actors send over 3 billion phishing emails a day. They also send texts warning you about a “failed” package delivery or pretending to be your organization's CEO. These phishing scams are an attempt at social engineering — essentially tricking you into handing over your login credentials directly or through a proxy website designed to look like the real thing. 
• Ransomware: Cyber attackers aren’t always after your credentials. Sometimes, they rely on ransomware to extort payment directly from their victims. This attack often comes as a downloadable file, like other forms of malware, and may be snuck into the victim’s hardware via a phishing attack or a malicious online ad. This type of attack will find and encrypt a select series of files and inform the victim that they won’t be able to regain access until they pay the requested ransom amount.
• DDoS attacks: Some hackers may not even want to steal something — all they want to do is disrupt operations to cause headaches for an organization and its clients. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) is a form of online vandalism where an attacker overwhelms an organization’s network to prevent it from operating at normal capacity. Many times, DDoS attacks are the purpose in and of themselves. However, they sometimes act as a feint for the real attack happening right under an organization’s nose.

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How to prevent hacking during the holiday season

It may seem like the odds are stacked against you and your security team. Luckily, you have tools that you can leverage to keep cyber attackers at bay, no matter how busy the holidays get. Keep the following tips in mind to strengthen your security posture well into the new year. 

Adopt zero trust principles

Implementing a zero trust security framework is a must for organizations looking to mitigate risk at scale. At its heart is the phrase “never trust, always verify,” which compels network infrastructure to continuously monitor for suspicious activity while reauthenticating users on a regular basis.

Not only is a zero trust framework a solid cybersecurity foundation in its own right, it’s especially beneficial during the holiday season. As resources are stretched thin, this framework can help fill the gaps through automated security checks and policy enforcement.

At a minimum, look to implement the following critical zero trust solutions: 

• Multi-factor authentication allows you to easily add another layer of security when authenticating logins.
• Least-privilege access policies prevent employees from accessing systems or files beyond what they need to do their jobs, limiting the potential impact of a breach.
• User and entity behavior analytics scan and compare current activity against past behavior data. Then, if they detect suspicious movement within your systems, they can either act autonomously or alert your security team.
• Continuous authentication requires users to log in periodically to ensure current users are who they say they are. 
• Assumed breach testing allows you to prepare for worst-case scenarios by determining how much damage malicious actors could inflict within current network conditions.

Use security service edge (SSE) tools to consolidate your security stance

Managing and monitoring multiple security tools is already tricky. Now, try to maintain the same level of security when many of your team members are out on vacation, and malicious actors are ramping up the volume of attacks. 

Consolidating these disparate elements with a security service edge (SSE) product can make it far easier to manage your organization’s complex security needs. It can help you secure your network and its many endpoints across laptops and mobile devices, as well as your on-premises, cloud, and hybrid network environments. 

There are three core services at the heart of SSE:

• The secure web gateway (SWG) analyzes traffic and protects your network from threats.
• Zero trust network access (ZTNA) provides secure remote access to essential applications, data, and services.
• Cloud access security brokers (CASB) help manage policy and data security for any information stored within the cloud.

Combining these tools into a unified SSE platform gives you a single pane of glass for monitoring traffic, managing user access policies, viewing security risks, and responding to threats. Rather than spinning up multiple services, SSE makes securing activity across various devices and cloud networks far more manageable — especially during the busy holiday season.

Train employees in cybersecurity best practices

Everyone is responsible for their organization’s cybersecurity posture. Implementing training sessions during the holidays is a great way to keep that responsibility top-of-mind as employees move through the hectic winter months.

These training sessions can take a number of forms. Consider sending regular email reminders about common threats, like phishing, and include steps employees can take to mitigate risk and help your team respond more effectively. You can also implement phishing and smishing tests to assess your organization’s readiness and use the results from that exercise to adjust your training efforts accordingly.

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Reduce complexity to boost cybersecurity this holiday season

When cyber attacks are rampant and resources are stretched thin, the last thing you need is an overly complex security infrastructure. Consolidating with an SSE platform can give you all the tools you rely on in a single place, manageably scaling your security stance across all devices and environments. To learn more, download our free e-book, Standalone Tools Create Complexity: Why You Need To Consolidate Your IT Security, today.