As the holiday season starts to ramp up, businesses are being warned to secure their IT defences against the onslaught of hackers ready to take advantage of skeleton IT staffs over the holidays. According to Michael Hamelin, chief security architect with security lifecycle management specialist Tufin Technologies, the Christmas and New Year periods are the key times for heavy-duty hackers.
"While you're doing your shopping or putting your feet up, our research shows that the would-be Neos of this world stop watching their DVD box sets of Matrix, and start hacking business computer systems," says Hamelin.
"Our survey of 79 hackers at the annual Defcon 17 event in Las Vegas, back in August, revealed that 81% of the hackers view the holiday season as the ideal time for hacking," he adds.
Tufin's research suggests that 52% of hackers prefer weekday evenings to gain unauthorised access to computer systems, while 32% hack away during weekday office hours, and just 15% spend their weekend breaking into online systems.
"This may be stating the obvious," says Hamelin, "but poorly configured firewalls remain a significant risk for many organisations… It's not the technology that's at fault, but rather the configuration and change control processes that are neglected or missing altogether," he concludes.
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