The Growing Holiday Cyber Security Threat

By Hector Cisneros

Every year since the invention of malware, cyber-attacks have escalated. This is especially true during the holiday season. Every October, the U.S. government commemorates National Cyber Security Awareness Month, guided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance. My question is why don’t they declare the whole fourth quarter National Cyber Security Awareness Season instead. During the holidays, cybercriminals are all too aware of how people are distracted by their holiday plans. People become more careless online, especially on social media and this allows cybercriminals to take advantage of them. To make things worse, it’s extremely easy for anyone to acquire hacking and ransomware tools that are easy to deploy, without being a cybercriminal mastermind. In this episode of Working the Web to Win, we will explore the latest cyber holiday threats and provide our readers with tips, tools, and resources to counter these holiday Cyber-Grinches. So, put on your holiday cap to learn about what happens as the season of thieving nears.

It's a Black Hat Christmas - Are Hackers in Your Stocking?

Courtesy of WorkingtheWebtoWin.com

By Hector Cisneros

The holidays are here! It’s almost Christmas. Your shopping for your loved ones, scoping out all the deals when you get an email from your favorite store for an incredible deal. All you have to do is log in and claim your special to win Christmas. What could be easier? Or is it? Every year at this time cybercriminals ramp up and sharpen their social engineering hacker techniques to capture your usernames and passwords. They want to gain access to your digital devices and secure the claim to your financial data. This year, it's time to shop on a smarter level. In this episode of Working the Web to Win, we will show you more than a dozen ways to protect your data and shopping experience to make this holiday special in a positive way. Don’t let the black hat hackers get in your Christmas stocking.

In Christmases of the past, we have written about how cyber thieves and hacking increases during the holidays. This is because so many shoppers are too busy hunting for a deal and not paying attention to their cyber security. First, we wrote about “The Byte Before Christmas” where we talked about the growing trend of cyber hacking during the holidays along with the bad behavior that goes with Black Friday shopping. Then we wrote an article called “The Grinch Goes Digital,” which covers 12 ways online scammers can steal from you this Christmas. Since then, we have written many other articles about the ever-escalating threat of hackers black hat trickery and how worldwide hacking is becoming a threat to our very way of life.

The Grinch Goes Digital

(We'll cover 12 ways online scammers can steal from you this Christmas.)

By Carl Weiss

Courtesy of  commons.wikimedia.org

TIS the season… to be scammed by online scammers who are out to steal your holiday cheer.  Every year as online commerce grows, so do online scams.  Today’s cybercriminals are going to try to entice you into giving them your hard earned cash through a number of ever more imaginative scams.  In today’s blog, I will endeavor to give you a leg up on the top 12 ways to avoid getting Grinched this holiday season.