Protect Yourself Against Holiday Cyberattacks: What Employees Need to Know

Key Takeaways

• Attackers target the holiday vulnerability window: Ransomware attempts surge 70% in November and December when security staff also take time off, creating delays in response.
• Social engineering exploits holiday psychology: Bad actors weaponize emotional triggers like urgency and fear that intensify during the shopping season, with 60% of breaches involving human factors.
• Seasonal workers create security gaps: 78% of temporary employees handling peak transaction volumes receive no social engineering training, making them prime targets during the most aggressive attack campaigns.

While your employees are checking off their holiday shopping lists, cybercriminals are working through their own. The weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s have become prime hunting season for attackers who know exactly when cyber defenses are the weakest.
The reasons why this window is so dangerous is that the holiday season is usually when your IT team is taking time off to be with family and friends. Your employees may be distracted by travel and shopping, and temporary workers filling in the slots may be left to handle sensitive transactions. Attackers watch for these patterns and time their campaigns well.
However, organizations that invest in human risk management programs and teach employees to recognize social engineering based on their individual vulnerabilities can enjoy the holidays without constantly putting out fires.
 

Cyberattacks in Holiday Seasons: The Statistics

Some concerning data regarding cyberattacks emerged in 2024. For instance, fake shopping sites shot up 284% in the months before the holidays. Employment scams—those “work from home, earn big money” emails—jumped 545%. Retailers got hit from every angle: supply chain attacks, data breaches, phishing, denial-of-service. More than half said they felt than any other time of year.
The data surrounding ransomware supports this narrative. The U.S. saw over 250 ransomware incidents in just the first three quarters of 2024. However, attempted ransomware attacks jump 70% in November and December compared to the dead months of January and February.
More shopping means more transactions, more payment processing, more data flying around. Attackers know organizations are stretched thin during peak season, which means two things: easier targets and higher likelihood companies will just pay the ransom to get operations back online before losing holiday revenue.
 

Your Cybersecurity Team Is on Vacation (And Attackers Know It)

Some organizations reduce cybersecurity staffing by up to 70% during weekends and holidays, and nearly half cut the size of their SOC teams by 50% or more outside working days.
When that happens, everything takes longer. A third of organizations said they couldn’t even get their incident response team together quickly when attack attempts happen. More than a third needed extra time to figure out how bad things were, and every delay counts when you’re bleeding money by the minute during holiday shopping season.
There’s also the concern of temporary workers hired to handle the holiday rush. 78% of these seasonal employees never receive any training on spotting phishing attempts, and more than half don’t even get basic guidance on safe internet use. However, they’re still hired to process payments and handle customer data with essentially zero cybersecurity awareness training.
One of the biggest challenges for retailers is having enough IT resources to keep up with threats. When you add in vacation schedules and untrained temps, you have the exact conditions attackers wait for.
Stretched thin during the holidays? Let NINJIO Managed Services handle your security awareness program.
 

The Psychology Behind Holiday Phishing

According to Verizon, 60% of data breaches involve a human element, and the costs add up quickly. As of 2025, the average cost of a data breach is $4.4M.
One thing to note is that attackers aren’t relying purely on breaking through firewalls. They’re manipulating people using seven emotional triggers: fear, obedience, greed, opportunity, sociableness, urgency, and curiosity.
During the holidays, these psychological buttons are already getting pushed constantly by legitimate marketing. At the same time, attackers just press harder.
Test your team’s vulnerabilities with phishing simulations that adapt to individual emotional triggers.

How Cybercriminals Turn Holiday Stress into Payday

Here’s how each emotional trigger gets exploited during the shopping rush:
Greed and opportunity work beautifully during shopping season. A “limited-time 70% off” email can be more tempting when you’re trying to stretch your budget. An individual browsing for deals during lunch might not scrutinize links as carefully. These are perfect opportunities for credential thefts carried out through fake sites that look exactly like the real store.
Urgency is everywhere. “Act now or miss out” can serve as a marketing tactic, but it’s also common enough to be seen as background noise. Attackers exploit this by sending emails that mimic sale countdowns or last-chance offers. Your normal “wait, let me check this” instinct gets overridden by “if I don’t click now, I’ll miss the deal.” Even careful people make mistakes when they’re rushing.
Fear shows up in account warnings. When you’re booking holiday travel, juggling family plans, managing year-end work deadlines, you’re already dealing with a lot on your plate. If an email pops up saying your bank account has suspicious activity during this busy season, you might panic and click immediately to “verify your identity.” In these cases, it’s an easy way for attackers who knew you’d be stressed and reactive to get your credentials.
Sociableness gets weaponized through familiar names. During the holidays, everyone’s swamped with emails from coworkers about office parties, gift exchanges, team lunch plans. One more message from a colleague asking you to “review this document before EOD” doesn’t stand out. You might click without checking if the email address is actually theirs. The document link then steals your credentials.

What Works During the Holiday Crunch?

Smart preparation is the way to go for the holidays. Here are practical steps that work when you’re already stretched thin.

If You’re Running the Security Team

• Maintain adequate staffing. Skeleton crews create vulnerability windows that attackers specifically target. Plan coverage using incentives, on-call rotations, or contractors before the season hits.
• Deploy automated threat detection. Set up alerts for unusual login patterns, failed authentication attempts, and suspicious network activity. Make sure someone responds to these alerts.
• Keep incident response plans accessible. If your systems are compromised, you can’t access digital documents. Print a short, clear plan that covers the first 24 hours of response.
• Train temporary workers on basics. Run a condensed session covering how to spot phishing, who to contact with questions, and why public WiFi is dangerous for work access.

If You’re an Employee

• Verify before clicking. Hover over links to see where they go. Check sender addresses character by character. When something feels off, call the person through another channel.
• Report suspicious emails liberally. Security teams would rather investigate false alarms than miss real attacks. You won’t get in trouble for being cautious.
• Avoid public WiFi for work. Use your VPN if you must access work systems while traveling. No VPN? Use your phone’s hotspot instead.
• Enable multi-factor authentication. While not foolproof, MFA makes attackers work harder, often causing them to move to easier targets.

Why Reporting Culture Matters Just As Much As Threat Detection

No cybersecurity system catches everything. The organizations that recover fastest are those where employees feel safe reporting suspicious activity, even if they are false alarms. A culture that encourages reporting turns your entire workforce into a detection network, dramatically reducing the time attackers have to operate undetected.

Don’t Let Cyberattacks Ruin Your Holidays

88% of cybersecurity professionals have missed family celebrations or weekend plans because of ransomware attacks. That’s not sustainable, it’s not necessary, and it’s not what we want for the people who protect our teams.
Organizations that invest in human risk management platforms year-round—combining personalized security coaching with simulated phishing testing and behavioral training—see real improvements in threat detection. More importantly, their employees can enjoy the holidays instead of dealing with breach fallout.
With the right training and preparation, your organization can stay secure without sacrificing everyone’s holiday plans. The key is building defenses before you need them, so you don’t scramble to respond after an attack hits.
Discover how a human risk management platform can help your organization build real defenses against social engineering. Schedule your personalized demo here.
 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What makes holiday cyberattacks different from other times?

A: Ransomware attempts increase between November and December. Cybercriminals target this window when organizations run reduced staff, employees are distracted, and transaction volumes peak, making their manipulation tactics blend perfectly with legitimate holiday marketing.

Q: Can employees protect themselves without formal cybersecurity awareness training?

A: Basic practices help, but phishing attempts these days use perfect grammar, real logos, and researched personal details. Recognizing these attacks will require practice with realistic examples in safe environments which simulated phishing and personalized coaching provide.

Q: How is personalized security coaching different from the training we already do?

A: Standard training gives everyone identical content. Personalized coaching identifies what tricks each person individually—urgency, obedience, opportunity—then trains them on recognizing those specific tactics. Different people need different training because different tactics fool different emotional vulnerabilities.

Q: What’s the point of phishing simulations?

A: They test you with realistic attacks and reveal which emotional triggers work on you specifically. When you click a simulated link, the system learns your vulnerabilities and tailors future training accordingly. This testing-learning-coaching cycle drives lasting behavior change.

Q: What happens if I fall for a phishing email?

A: Tell your cybersecurity team immediately. Fast reporting stops attacks from spreading. Even experts make mistakes. But staying quiet and letting the problem grow could have serious consequences.
 
 

About NINJIO

NINJIO reduces human-based cybersecurity risk through engaging training, personalized testing, and insightful reporting. Our multi-pronged approach to training focuses on the latest attack vectors to build employee knowledge and the behavioral science behind human engineering to sharpen users’ intuition. The proprietary NINJIO Risk Algorithm™ identifies users’ social engineering vulnerabilities based on NINJIO Phish3D phishing simulation data and informs content delivery to provide a personalized experience that changes individual behavior.