If you’re anything like us, you’re already thinking about kicking back and enjoying the upcoming hols? Then now’s the time to put some cyber precautions in place.

You might be diligent about the sunscreen slip-slop-slap, keeping the sausages chilling in the fridge until they’re ready for the barbie, and keeping credit card debt under control, but this time of year also brings more cyber risk.

And that’s understandable. It’s a busy time, and everyone’s got enough on their plate as it is.

We always encourage year-round vigilance, but over the next few months (especially December) you need to up your game even more. Here’s why.

Your people are distracted and under time pressure

In the run-up to the holidays, your staff will be trying to close projects, process invoices and orders, organise their leave, and make sure they can go away feeling everything’s under control. (And fair enough too. Who wants to think about things left undone when you’re in relax mode?)

But that makes those urgent-looking phishing, payment, and credentials requests easier to slip through the net unnoticed. With the natural increase in delivery, shopping, and promotional emails that comes with holidays, it’s easier to click before you think.

Fewer eyes on your cyber security

Annual leave can mean that (unless you have a managed services partner like Colton taking care of your business 24/7), fewer people are keeping an eye on things and ready to act if something goes wrong.

Annual shutdowns can be an attractive window for cybercriminals (the wicked never rest). The USA’s FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have noted an increase in impactful ransomware attacks over holidays and weekends (think Mother’s Day, etc.), when businesses may have fewer defenders on the ground.

Does it happen here in Australia? Yep, it does. 52% of ransomware incidents reported (including Australian and New Zealand organisations) occurred during weekends or public holidays.

In short, reduced coverage is like a carrot on a stick for cybercriminals.

The best place to hide a tree?

As the old saying goes, the best place to hide a tree is in a forest. And when there’s a pile of legitimate digital activity going on, what better place for a criminal to hide a cyber threat than amongst the hundreds, if not thousands, of emails flowing into your business?

Australian online retail traffic peaks from November through December. Black Friday/Cyber Monday (in late November) is now the standout sales period, with Australia Post explicitly describing these days as part of the “peak sales season.” And if you’re wondering, Xero‘s 2025 Australian research found 58% of surveyed small businesses said Black Friday had overtaken Boxing Day as Australia’s biggest sales event.

Regardless, sales in November and December collectively are huge. Australia Post recorded 7.9 million households shopping online across those two months last year.

Fake parcel notifications, online stores, gift cards, special offers and account alerts don’t look particularly unusual in November or December. With the sheer volume of transactions at this time of year, it’s no wonder cyber threats slip through unnoticed… until it’s too late.

Don’t gift wrap and give away your data

By all means, enjoy the feeling that you’re about to take a well-deserved break (and that goes for those taking time out later in the year, too). But don’t use it as an excuse to take your eye off the ball.

Here’s what you can do to help secure your business and data despite the busy season:

Focus on phishing and fraud prevention

  • Brief your team. Share a couple of examples of what dodgy emails look like. It sounds basic, but it works.

  • Double-check any unexpected payment requests – especially if they’re “urgent.” Pick up the phone and verify before you act.

  • Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on your email and key accounts. That way, even if someone gets hold of a password, they still can’t get in.

  • Got anti-CEO spoofing in place? If not, ask us about it – it flags emails impersonating your senior team before they land in inboxes.

The best phishing email? One that never reaches your team’s inbox. That’s why we use SpamTitan for our clients – it filters phishing emails, spoofed messages (emails that pretend to come from someone you trust – but don’t!), and malicious links, using smart filtering to catch the things that look just a little bit off – before your team ever sees them.

It has a 99.99% accuracy rate in spotting phishing attempts, and it plays nicely with Microsoft 365, so it slots straight into what you’re already using.

Make sure you’ve got monitored backups

  • Know when your last backup actually ran. Not “pretty recently” – actually check. If your backup failed last Tuesday and nobody noticed, you’ve got a gap in your safety net. Monitored backups mean someone’s watching, so problems get fixed before they become your problem.

  • Don’t assume cloud means covered. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and other cloud tools you might use may have their own retention policies – but they’re designed to protect themselves, not necessarily you. If a file gets deleted, corrupted, or encrypted by a ransomware attack, your cloud provider may not be the one to rescue it.

  • Back up more than once a day. Back up at least four times daily. Your last one shouldn’t be at 5 pm – especially if someone’s working late on a big presentation for the next morning!

  • Make sure your backups can’t be wiped in an attack. Ransomware attackers are specifically targeting backup repositories – so when you go to restore your data, you can’t. That strategy drives 90% of ransomware attacks. Immutable backups (ones that can’t be deleted or overwritten, even mid-attack) are the way to go.

  • Test your restore process – before you need it. A backup that’s never been tested is just a hunch. Run a quarterly restore test so you know it actually works. The worst time to find out it doesn’t is during a crisis.

  • Get a monthly report. An automated monthly backup report shows successful backups or if there was an issue each day – a high-level traffic light report so you can see at a glance that everything’s ticking along.

The backup solution we rely on for our clients is Arcserve, and it’s the reason we can back up everything we just said – literally and figuratively. Immutable backups lock down your data using write-once, read-many policies, making it 100% resistant to change. While your team can view it, no one can, deliberately or otherwise, overwrite or delete it.

One less thing to worry about this silly season

The good news? Sort a couple of things now, and you’ll actually be able to enjoy the break.

Not sure where your business is at and what (if anything) needs attention before you clock off?

It doesn’t have to be a big project. Sometimes it’s just a quick conversation – and we’ll tell you honestly what needs attention and what doesn’t.