The Cybersecurity (opens in new tab) and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are reminding organizations, businesses, and critical infrastructure (opens in new tab) to stay vigilant against threats during the upcoming holiday season (opens in new tab).
The advisory leans on history to warn critical infrastructure partners that the holidays provide an opportune time for cyber actors from “halfway across the world” to launch attacks to disrupt critical networks and systems.
The agencies suggest that all personnel in an organization must undertake all necessary steps to proactively protect themselves against cyberattacks, including possible ransomware (opens in new tab) attacks, during the holidays, when businesses operate on skeletal staff.
=“CISA and the FBI strongly urge all entities–especially critical infrastructure partners–to examine their current cybersecurity posture and implement best practices and mitigations (opens in new tab) to manage the risk posed by cyber threats,” suggest (opens in new tab) the agencies.
Follow best practices
Furthermore, CISA and the FBI suggest that all organizations remain vigilant against the multiple techniques cybercriminals use to gain access to networks, including phishing (opens in new tab) scams.
They’ve also listed a series of actions that organizations must undertake to protect themselves. These include implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA (opens in new tab)) for administrative accounts and remote access (opens in new tab), mandating the use of strong passwords (opens in new tab), and best password practices, and other actions.
Although they haven’t identified any specific threats, the agencies argue that recent 2021 trends show that threat actors tend to launch malicious ransomware campaigns during holidays and weekends, including the US Independence Day and Mother’s Day weekends.
The agencies also suggest that organizations review and update their incident response and communication plans, which will reduce the risk of severe business/functional degradation in the event an organization falls victim to an attack.
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