How Important is Cyber Security at Christmas?

Christmas is no different to any time of the year when it comes to cyber security, it is always important! Christmas means spending time at home with your family and kicking back with your feet up, but for criminals it is an opportunity. With offices empty this is a perfect opportunity for criminals to start causing chaos for your business.

Even before the Christmas break starts your business is vulnerable because your staff could start becoming distracted and making more mistakes. A recent study showed that more than a million cyber-attacks happened in 2016 during the holiday season, this shows that cyber-attacks tend to peak around Christmas.

There’s no need to panic about your cyber security on your time off, just being aware that extra vigilance is needed around this time is a good start. Make sure you remind your employees of the dangers of phishing emails, rouge websites and other security threats and tell them what to look out for and what they can do in the future to be safe. They have probably heard about this all before but there’s no harm in reminding them!

If you create regular backups to multiple destinations, then you will have less to worry about. Backups can be automated, so you can leave them to do their work while you celebrate Christmas. If you want extra security, then you can check in on them occasionally.

Letting your guard down a little bit at Christmas doesn’t mean that hackers will instantly destroy your business, but the risk of it happening does increase around this time of the year so its better to be a bit more careful. If your cyber security is weak and you don’t have a backup system then you do have something to worry about but don’t worry, we can help!