Holiday Cyber Security Checklist: Protecting Your Business Over Christmas

Protect your business from Christmas-period cyber threats with this practical holiday cyber security checklist. Reduce the risk of phishing, ransomware, and invoice fraud while keeping your systems, people, and data secure over the festive break.

The Christmas period creates a perfect storm for cyber attacks. Your team is running on skeleton staff, offices sit empty for days, and cyber criminals know response times are slow. That makes it one of the riskiest times of the year for phishing, ransomware, and invoice fraud.

Strong cyber security over Christmas isn’t about complexity. It’s about putting sensible safeguards in place so your systems, people, and data stay protected while the business slows down.

This checklist will help you prepare for the holiday period and avoid starting the new year with a security incident.

1. Review access, accounts, and permissions

Before your team signs off, make sure access across your systems is current and appropriate.

Remove or disable unused or legacy user accounts
Check that leavers have been fully deprovisioned
Review admin and privileged accounts
Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all critical systems
Confirm third-party supplier access is still required and secured

Avoid shared accounts wherever possible. They make incident investigation and accountability difficult.

2. Strengthen email and phishing protections

Phishing attempts spike during busy seasonal periods, especially when staff are distracted or working irregular hours.

Remind staff to watch for unexpected emails like delivery notices, payment requests, or “urgent” holiday messages
Check that email filtering, spoofing protection, and warning banners work properly
Make sure employees know how to report suspicious messages quickly
Apply extra scrutiny to finance or supplier-related approvals over the break

If your organisation experiences a phishing attempt, log and review it even if no one clicks. Repeated attempts can indicate targeted activity.

3. Back up critical systems and test your recovery

A backup is only useful if it works when you need it. Before closing down for Christmas:

Confirm backups are running successfully across key systems
Ensure at least one copy is offline or immutable
Test that you can restore data from backup, not just that a backup exists
Verify that recovery documentation is accessible to the right people

If ransomware hits during the holidays, tested backups can be the difference between disruption and disaster.

Related Reading: Ransomware: 7 Ways to Protect Your Business

4. Prepare your incident response contacts and processes

With reduced staffing, clarity becomes essential. Every organisation should have a simple, accessible incident response plan covering:

Who to contact in the event of a suspected incident
How to isolate affected devices or accounts
Which external parties may need notification (insurer, regulator, suppliers)
How incidents should be recorded and escalated

Make sure key decision-makers are reachable during the break, or assign clear alternates. Even a short delay in response can significantly increase the impact of an attack.

Related Reading: How to Develop an Incident Response Plan

5. Secure remote access and holiday working

Many employees will work remotely over Christmas, especially in flexible or distributed teams.

Ensure remote access is protected with MFA
Restrict access to systems that aren’t required during the break
Discourage the use of personal devices for business-critical activity
Confirm VPNs, endpoint protection, and device encryption are enabled and up to date

If contractors or temporary staff are working during the holiday period, ensure their access is time-limited and reviewed afterwards.

6. Patch, update, and harden systems before downtime

Where practical, apply critical updates before the holiday slowdown rather than postponing them until the new year.

Patch operating systems, servers, firewalls, and business-critical applications
Check that endpoint protection is active and updating successfully
Disable services, ports, or integrations that are no longer required
Document any changes so they can be reviewed in January

If updates can’t be applied before the break, ensure the associated risk is acknowledged and monitored.

7. Protect payment processes and financial approvals

The Christmas period is prime time for invoice fraud and business email compromise, particularly where finance teams are short-staffed.

Reinforce out-of-band verification for bank detail changes and large payments
Avoid approving unusual or last-minute financial requests via email alone
Flag high-risk transactions for additional review
Ensure delegated authority limits are clear during staff absence

Attackers often imitate executives or suppliers and rely on urgency to bypass controls. A short verification step can prevent significant financial loss.

8. Limit what runs while your business is closed

If areas of your environment won’t be used during the holiday period, consider reducing the attack surface.

Power down non-essential on-premises systems where appropriate
Restrict administrative activity to emergency changes only
Review scheduled tasks, integrations, or automations that may not be needed
Ensure physical premises and server rooms remain secure during closures

Any reduction in exposed services lowers the number of potential entry points for attackers.

Related Reading: What is an Attack Surface in Cybersecurity?

Related Reading: What is an Attack Surface Assessment?

9. Set expectations with staff before they switch off

Human behaviour remains one of the largest factors in cyber risk. Before the break:

Remind staff how to report lost devices, suspected phishing, or unusual account activity
Encourage employees not to bypass controls “just to get something done quickly”
Clarify whether any teams are expected to check emails or systems during closure
Reassure staff that early reporting is always better than silence

A short, practical reminder is often more effective than a long training session at this time of year.

10. Plan a post-Christmas review

Finally, schedule time in January to:

Review any incidents, near-misses, or suspicious activity from the holiday period
Validate that temporarily restricted access or permissions have been restored appropriately
Assess whether your holiday security preparations were effective
Update your checklist and response plans based on real-world learning

Cyber security resilience improves through iteration, not one-off preparation.

A safer Christmas for your business

The festive break should be a time to rest, not a period of heightened anxiety about your systems and data. By taking a structured, checklist-driven approach, you can significantly reduce your exposure to seasonal cyber risks while keeping pressure off your teams.

If you’d like support reviewing your cyber security posture ahead of peak holiday periods, whether through penetration testing, configuration reviews, or incident readiness planning, our team can help you build a practical, defensible approach tailored to your organisation.

Related Reading: Penetration Testing: A Comprehensive Guide

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