‘Twas the week before Christmas and Santa was aware
Attackers had targeted his elves with ransomware
Naughty Lister’s sought revenge on the North Pole branch
But Santa had no time for a cyber avalanche
With no room for hiccups and his lists double-checked
Santa put in a call to his friends at Field Effect
Soon enough, Santa had no cyber security fear
So, I guess you could say that we saved Christmas this year!
How did we do it? How did we know?
Check it all out it in our blog below.
Threat monitoring keeps Santa’s data secure
Cyber criminals are always trying to get their hands on Santa’s data. His naughty and nice list contains tons of personally identifiable information — full names, delivery addresses, wish lists, and more. Not to mention the elves’ personal information, reindeers’ health records, sensitive toy-building documents, payroll data, and workshop supplier contracts!
Santa simply has too much valuable information to run the risk of a breach, so he secures it with an end-to-end threat monitoring, detection, and response solution. Intelligent alerts warn of suspicious activity, whether it’s an external threat or internal one (it’s true — some elves have made it on the naughty list before). Santa also receives detailed instructions that help him quickly and properly address the threat.
He always makes sure to back up his data too, just in case. This cyber security best practice limits the harm caused if a cyber attack does occur, helping the elves get back on track to meet tight Christmas deadlines!
The workshop equipment is always up to date
Santa’s workshop has tons of equipment and automated tools that the elves depend on for toy-building. After years of refinement, the process is finally perfect. His team is building, testing, gift-wrapping, and loading toys into the sleigh in record time.
But sometimes the equipment requires a system update to fix a bug or vulnerability. And these patches shouldn’t be optional — up to 60% of data breaches are caused by an available but unapplied software update. So, to keep things running smoothly, Santa always makes time to install updates when they’re available.
His devices stay safe with endpoint protection
Santa’s IT infrastructure has gotten a little chaotic. He still uses his GPS to stay organized on Christmas Eve and his trusty weather tracker keeps the reindeer out of harm’s way. But the head elf likes to work remotely, Mrs. Claus loves smart home gadgets, and there’s a new BYOD policy for the elves in finance.
And while Santa always makes sure the team uses a password manager to track their hard-to-guess credentials and multi-factor authentication to keep their devices secure, he had to make sure his endpoint protection was sophisticated. Santa made sure his threat monitoring, detection, and response solution covers endpoints too.
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Santa always inspects email links and files before clicking
Kids these days send their wishlists by email, not snail mail. That means Santa’s inbox receives millions of messages a week, often with links to toys at online stores.
But Santa knows that cyber criminals like to use social engineering techniques to launch ransomware attacks. He needs to be careful opening his emails — clicking a malicious link or document could install malware, encrypt key data, and ruin Christmas!
Santa could never let that happen, so he always pauses to inspect emails closely, especially if the sender asks him to download a document or click a link. If he’s ever unsure about an email, he just uses Field Effect’s Suspicious Email Analysis Service to have one of our experts double-check the authenticity of the sender or contents.
And there you have it: Santa’s top tips for keeping his special Christmas operations secure all year long. If you need more cyber security best practices, find them here in our Cyber Security 101: Your guide to getting the basics right eBook.
