With the holiday season on us, everyone is looking forward to time off. However, empty offices and offline employees present cybercriminals with the perfect opportunity to exploit vulnerabilities within a company’s network. In fact, studies have shown a 30% increase in ransomware attacks and a 70% increase in attempted cyberattacks during the holiday season.
Despite this drastic increase, there are cyber defense strategies companies can begin implementing now to get ahead of these potential threats. John Stringer, head of product at Next DLP (“Next”) offers expert commentary on how and why the holiday season poses major cybersecurity risks.
John Stringer, head of product, Next DLP
“As employees prepare to take well-deserved time off to celebrate the upcoming holiday season, organizations should consider how an empty ‘office’ could create a window for accidental or malicious insider threat activities to occur. Unfortunately, cyber adversaries don’t shut off activities around the holidays. Increases in cyberattacks and phishing scams, occurrences of employees using login credentials from public airport or hotel Wi-Fi, and overall decreases in workforce engagement all pose the risk of data loss.
With the holiday season officially underway, it’s important for organizations to take the burden of defense off of the average employee. Luckily, by adopting a modern data loss prevention solution to enforce data handling policies, your employees can enjoy this time of the year, and company leaders can relax knowing that enterprise resources are not being deliberately or unintentionally misused.”
