Why do cyber attacks often happen during holidays?
Because fewer people are watching, so attackers have more time before anyone reacts. Over holidays and long weekends, offices are empty, IT staff are away and responses are slower, which gives an intruder hours or days to spread and encrypt data before discovery. CISA and the FBI warned about this pattern in their joint advisory on ransomware awareness for holidays and weekends, published in August 2021. The defence is preparation rather than staying at work: alerts that reach someone who is on call, a written list of who can disconnect what, recent backups with an offline copy, and multi-factor authentication on remote access. Network detection helps by keeping watch: NetSenX alerts at any hour, but someone still has to read them.
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