December should be a time for winding down, celebrating the year’s achievements and enjoying a well-earned break. But while your team is focusing on family, celebrations and the final push before the holidays, cyber criminals are doing quite the opposite. They see this period as an opportunity.
Every year, there is a noticeable rise in phishing attempts, data breaches and opportunistic attacks during December. Businesses slow down, staff are distracted and systems aren’t monitored as closely as usual. It creates a perfect opening for anyone looking to take advantage.
The good news is that with some sensible preparation, you can keep your business safe and resilient throughout the festive period.
Cyber crime Rises During the Festive Season
While most people are switching off and taking a breather, attackers become more active. There are a few reasons for this. One being reduced staff, when key people are away from the office, incidents can go unnoticed for longer. A delayed response often results in greater disruption. There is also distraction and fatigue. By December, most teams are tired. Concentration slips and people are more likely to click on something they shouldn’t. There is a massive increase in delivery and shopping scams. Fake parcel notifications, order confirmations and delivery updates are everywhere at this time of year. They look convincing and they catch people out. You also have the worry about increased personal device usage away from the secure office network. Staff may quickly check emails on their phones while out shopping or working from home. Personal devices and home networks aren’t always configured securely! Delayed updates and maintenance, some businesses pause updates or change schedules in December with changes to staff working patterns or holidays. Unpatched systems give attackers a much larger window to exploit a weakness
Some Common Festive Threats
A few specific risks always appear around Christmas. Fake delivery emails and text messages. Messages pretending to be from couriers such as Royal Mail, Amazon or DPD increase significantly. They usually ask you to click a link or pay a small fee. One wrong click is enough to cause trouble. You also get a rise in charity and holiday theme scams. Scammers use the season of giving to encourage donations to fake causes or to purchase fake versions of the latest hot products. These emails can be extremely convincing.
Weak home setups, this should be a cause for concern at all times of year to be fair, not just at Christmas. People working from home often use shared devices or unsecured routers. That creates an easy path into business systems. Always passwords! Rushing leads to shortcuts. If a personal password is reused for work and that personal account is breached, business data can become exposed.
Steps to Keep Your Business Safe This Christmas
A little planning now can prevent a disaster later on. So strengthen MFA and access controls. Make sure multi-factor authentication is in place on all critical systems. It remains one of the most effective ways to prevent unauthorised access. Review user access. Check who has access to what. Remove anything that is no longer needed and ensure permissions match each person’s role. Test your backups! Do not assume backups are working. Run a recovery test and confirm you can restore data if needed.
Apply updates as scheduled, if you manually push updates speak to Jeccl to find out how we may be able to automate this for you. Install security patches and updates before staff go off for Christmas. Unpatched systems are a major risk. Brief your team. Remind staff to be cautious, especially with delivery notifications, unexpected attachments and unusual requests for payment or login information.
Keep your monitoring active, automate what you can, speak to Jeccl about our 24/7 monitoring. Your systems should continue to be monitored even when the office is closed. Alerts still need to be captured and acted upon. Confirm emergency cover. Make sure everyone knows who to contact if something urgent happens over the break.
Building Resilience During the Christmas Slowdown
The festive period presents a good opportunity to review your overall IT resilience. Ask yourself whether your cloud services are healthy, whether you have a clear picture of your devices and user accounts, and whether your data is properly protected. A small amount of planning prevents January from beginning with a crisis.
At Jeccl, we focus on keeping your business secure so you can relax. Our remote monitoring, managed updates and security tools continue working even when your office is empty. If you need an IT health check, assistance testing backups, help strengthening your security controls or support preparing for 2026, we are here to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Christmas should be enjoyable, not stressful. A few sensible steps now significantly reduce the risk of disruption during the holidays. Get your team ready, tighten your defences and make sure you are protected while everyone takes a well-earned rest.
If you would like support with any of this, or simply want reassurance that everything is in good shape before the break, Jeccl is here to help.