Around the holiday season, people turn to the internet to purchase gifts for loved ones and supplies for the upcoming festivities. With this increase in activity, hackers also come out in larger numbers to take advantage of already overwhelmed businesses. Here are some of the common threats they can pose to your company and what your cybersecurity team can do to keep you and your customers protected.
What Are Common Cybersecurity Threats During the Holiday Season?
1. Phishing
Phishing involves stealing personal information or tricking people into downloading malware onto their devices by getting computer users to click on—or follow the instructions of—a fraudulent electronic communication.
Have your cybersecurity team regularly remind employees not to open emails, click on links, or open attachments from unknown or suspicious sources. Also, make it abundantly clear that if any employee suspects that they opened a malicious email, message, app, or website to inform your IT department at once. Most of the time, if one person is targeted, many others have been too.
2. Ransomware
This type of phishing attack involves having a recipient open an attachment or visit a fake website that downloads malware and encrypts files and documents on the individual’s computer. In some cases, it can affect all computers within the network. This stops users from accessing necessary information. The only solutions are either paying the hacker's ransom to get the decryption key or relying on backup data.
In addition to warning employees about email security, limit access to particular business accounts to necessary individuals, regularly disable unused accounts, and whenever possible, use multi-factor authentication, which will require employees to provide multiple passwords or codes to gain access to a system.
3. DDoS Attacks
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack involves overwhelming a server with traffic so that it cannot serve customers as intended. In recent years, attackers have used DDoS attacks to keep websites shut down until ransoms are paid to call them off. They have also flooded retail websites, filling up carts with products they don't intend to buy, so it looks like there is no inventory for website visitors. This allows competitors to mark up prices.
To block these threats, your company needs a Web Application Firewall (WAF). It acts as a reverse proxy to monitor and filter out malicious traffic before it can reach the server. Also, regularly update and patch computer applications and operating systems to make your website less susceptible to attacks.
Make sure your business is protected from hackers this holiday season by having our team at C2XCEL handle all of your cybersecurity needs. We are a veteran-owned and -operated company. Even though we are based in McKinney, TX, we provide global telecommunication services. We can identify threats to your network and provide effective solutions for protecting your data in the future. Call (844) 422-9235 with questions. Visit our website to learn more about our security solutions.
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