The holidays are a time for family, gratitude, and celebration—but they’re also prime time for cybercriminals. Just as an uninvited guest might try to sneak into your Thanksgiving dinner, hackers use spoofed emails to disguise themselves as someone you know and trust.
When the Thanksgiving rush is on, the last thing you want is ransomware carving up your systems. If you’re hit, stay calm and work the plan—fast, clear steps can limit damage and speed recovery.
The First Hour (Containment)
Isolate immediately.
The holiday season is all about gathering, giving thanks, and sharing. But amid the flurry of Thanksgiving emails, sales promotions, and festive greetings, cybercriminals are also busy trying to serve up scams. One careless click on a suspicious link could open the door to hackers, malware, or phishing attacks.
As the Thanksgiving season rolls around, many of us are preparing to welcome family, friends, and even clients into our homes and offices. Along with turkey, pumpkin pie, and gratitude, one common request is, “What’s your Wi-Fi password?”
Sharing Wi-Fi may feel like a generous gesture (after all, Thanksgiving is all about sharing), but letting guests onto your main network is like leaving the front door wide open during dinner.
The cloud should be a secure place for business data, but cloud misconfigurations and lax security practices often leave the door wide open for cybercriminals. This article explores how to close those gaps.
Why cloud security continues to fail
A recent report by the cloud security firm Tenable highlights an alarming trend: 74% of companies surveyed had storage settings configured incorrectly.
As we head into Thanksgiving—menus planned, guests invited, travel set—one thing often missing from the checklist is a plan for when things go sideways online. A cyber incident response plan is the playbook your team follows after a breach, ransomware event, or other attack.
Logging out is a task so simple yet always forgotten, putting businesses at risk. While this practice may seem minor, it greatly enhances your online security and protects your data from unauthorized access.
Why Logging Out Matters
Logging out matters primarily due to security and privacy.
Many businesses assume that passing a PCI audit means they’re “secure.” It doesn’t. PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is vital—but it focuses primarily on how you store, process, and transmit cardholder data. Modern attacks target far more than payment flows, and gaps outside PCI scope can still lead to costly breaches, downtime, and reputational damage.
Unexpected events such as natural disasters, hardware failures, or cyberattacks can quickly upend your operations. While a well-built business continuity plan (BCP) can minimize those risks, that’s only if it’s properly developed and maintained.
Passwords have been a staple of online security for decades, but relying on them alone is no longer enough. Cybersecurity experts now emphasize the importance of adding layers of protection to defend against today’s more advanced threats.
Why your security strategy must go beyond passwords
Cybersecurity experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) now warn that passwords are fundamentally vulnerable and should be avoided whenever possible.