Why You Need To Know Your Security Posture Before The Holidays Hit

The holiday season should feel like a time to celebrate with your team and enjoy some well-deserved time off. But for cybersecurity leaders, the holidays bring a particular kind of stress. Cybercriminals take advantage of this period when IT teams are stretched thin, offices run with skeleton staff, and security oversight declines. Even worse, attackers know that the easiest entry point isn't your firewall – it’s weak access control.

Whether it’s contractors, subsidiaries, or third-party vendors, weak or poorly governed access control remains one of the leading causes of major breaches across APAC. And with attackers becoming more sophisticated in scanning supply chain security gaps, it's not enough to guess whether your organization has vulnerabilities. You need to understand where they are before the holidays arrive.

Why Holidays are Prime Targets for Cybercriminals

Cyberattacks don’t follow business hours, and they definitely don’t take holidays. Threat actors across APAC consistently time their campaigns to coincide with:

• National celebrations when attention is elsewhere
• Long weekends that leave systems unmonitored
• Seasonal shopping surges that create operational chaos
• Holiday periods with reduced staffing and slower response times

These conditions create the ideal environment for attackers. Attack rates rise, incident response slows, and operational damage multiplies.

A global example illustrates this strategy well. During Memorial Day 2023, the Clop ransomware group executed the massive MOVEit attack, exploiting a zero-day vulnerability when teams were least prepared and impacting hundreds of organizations worldwide.¹

Holiday security risks are heightened, but maintaining visibility into your attack surface matters all year long. The holidays just amplify existing weaknesses.

The Real Cost of Holiday Breaches APAC Pays the Price

Recent APAC studies estimate the average impact of ransomware incidents at around USD $2-3 million.² But when these attacks happen during the holidays, the costs often climb much higher.

When considering the combined costs of downtime, system restoration, lost revenue, regulatory penalties, and reputational damage, holiday breaches rank among the most expensive categories of cyber incidents. The timing doesn't just make incidents more likely; it makes them more damaging.

Why Attackers Succeed: Weak Access Control

Look at every major security incident in APAC over the past few years, and you'll find the same vulnerability at the root: weak access control between subsidiaries, vendors, remote offices, and supply-chain partners.

Attackers exploit overprivileged user accounts, unmonitored contractor access, and outdated or exposed internet-facing systems. Remote sites with limited security staffing and businesses with weak subsidiary governance are also at risk.

Our Safous Security Assessment data aligns with these patterns. We consistently find that:

• Subsidiaries and partners are frequent targets
• Attackers map supply chains via OSINT
• Weak access governance is the biggest entry point
• Blind spots across remote locations often go unreported until too late

One weak access point is all an attacker needs. They don't need to compromise your entire security program. They just need to find one place where access control is loose enough to get through.

How To Check Your Security Posture Before the Holidays Begin

Before the holiday season arrives, you need clarity on what your real vulnerabilities are. The Safous Security Assessment offers a fast, non-intrusive, external evaluation designed to show you what attackers see when they look at your organization and where the gaps actually exist.

Here's what the assessment covers:

Attack Surface Visibility

You see weaknesses across your entire IT, OT, and cloud ecosystem. We cover your vendors and regional offices too, not just your main headquarters.

Quantitative Risk Scoring

We score your security using an "A-F" system that makes it easy for executives and operational teams to understand and act on immediately.

Detailed Reports

You don't have to wait weeks for findings. We send detailed reports within five days, so your teams can fix issues quickly before the holiday season arrives.

New Risk Notifications

If new vulnerabilities or exposures appear during your subscription period, you get alerts so you can respond.

Security Analyst Support

You're not working alone. We provided guided recommendations to help you remediate faster and align with Zero Trust principles.

Monthly Assessments

Our annual plan also includes monthly assessments, so your security visibility can keep pace with the changing threat landscape.

Strengthen Your Holiday Protection With Safous 

Understanding your vulnerabilities is the first step. But you also need to secure access during the season itself, especially when your team is running lean.

When you combine this with Safous Privileged Remote Access, you add even more protection:

• Privileged credentials are never exposed to the network
• Every session is monitored and recorded, so you know what happened
• High-risk actions are controlled or blocked in real time
• Secure access to OT, ICS, and SCADA systems through isolated sessions
• Holiday support teams can perform necessary maintenance safely

Together, Safous keeps your organization secure even when physical offices are closed or operating with minimal staff. Your team can work with confidence that access is controlled and monitored.

Ready to stay a step ahead of attackers this holiday season? Request your Safous Security Assessment today, or book a demo of Safous Privileged Remote Access now. 

Sources:

1. https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa23-158a
2. https://my.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prAP52565924