Holiday Attacks Inevitable

Aaron Turner is Vectra‘s CTO, SaaS Protect. He said a significant majority of cyberattacks now are executed by people with profit motivations. The longer victims take to respond, the greater likelihood the attackers can succeed to maximize their opportunities.

“While ransomware attacks are the focus today, the trend of attackers exploiting vulnerabilities during holidays is one that has been in place for decades,” he said. “With IT workers wanting to enjoy a holiday with friends and family, security teams may not be fully staffed, administrators with privileges to stop attackers in their paths may not answer calls or emails as quickly, and those reduced resources and delayed responses result in an advantage for attackers.”

In years past, enemies of the United States have attempted to embarrass U.S. government and military cybersecurity teams around July 4th, Turner said. At this time of elevated risk due to the Russia/Ukraine conflict, Russia definitely has motivation to exploit the holiday in some way.

“Whether it is a nation-state attack attempting to score a virtual victory against the U.S. or a lowly ransomware operation looking to extract some cryptocurrency from an understaffed company whose IT team is taking some time off for the national holiday, there is surely going to be some cyberattack action this coming holiday weekend,” he said.