Introduction
December is the most vulnerable month of the year.
The IBM Threat Intelligence Index 2024 indicates a 38% increase in attacks during the holiday season.
The reason? Fewer staff, more automated operations, and less focused teams.
1. Review temporary access and legacy permissions.
Users who no longer work there or whose access was granted for end-of-year campaigns should be removed.
Source: Microsoft Identity Security Posture Research 2024.
2. Activate 24/7 monitoring and alerts.
During the holiday season, incident response times decrease by 60% (IBM 2024).
Continuous monitoring is key.
It covers:
- Firewalls
- Entrance ID
- Endpoints
- Anomalous traffic
3. Protect remote endpoints.
Employees connect from hotels, homes, airports, and unsecured connections.
Recommended:
- EDR
- Mandatory VPN
- USB Device Control
- Disk Encryption
Source: Gartner Endpoint Protection 2024.
4. Test your recovery plan
An untested backup is a useless backup.
NIST recommends quarterly testing, especially before holidays.
5. Reduce alert “noise”
Analysts often overlook critical alerts when there are too many false notifications.
Implement:
✔ Smart rules
✔ Threat prioritization
✔ High-fidelity alerts
Source: Palo Alto Cortex XDR 2024.
Conclusion
Securing operations during holidays prevents disruptions and financial losses.