The holiday season is a prime time for cybercriminals due to increased online activity, year-end campaigns from companies, year-end rush to close the budget, and often overextended IT teams, which may be on vacation. Today, Sempris issued the attached Holiday Ransomware Report that found what we know and some of us have experienced, cyberattacks increase over holidays and weekends. If you haven’t done so already done so doublecheck your plan now to maintain it maximizes cybersecurity for your County and/or agencies. Below is a list of considerations with links to more information. We wish you a safe and secure holiday season. PREPARE FOR HOLIDAY CYBER ATTACKS: Attackers strike the most during holidays and weekends when companies are vulnerable and understaffed. ⚠️ Attacks are more common during non-business hours, mostly due to less staff available to protect the company. ⚠️ Large, profitable companies tend to be the main targets but small businesses with less protection are also a target. ⚠️The attacks that occur during non-business hours take longer to investigate and resolve, which may slow response and notification. Action Items Protect your organization with these practices: ✅ Review cyber incident response plans, resiliency plans, and communications plans. ✅ Reiterate cybersecurity user awareness and training program tips that include guidance on how to report incidents. ✅ Tune endpoint protection, regularly update, and enable real-time detection for antivirus software on all hosts. ✅ Make (and test restore) an offline backup of your data. ✅ Confirm multi-factor authentication (MFA) is working as intended for all services possible. ✅ Confirm software and operating systems are up to date to download the latest security patches. ✅ Scan for open and unused ports and remove any application not deemed necessary for day-to-day operations. ✅ Add an email banner to emails received from outside your organization to warn employees. More Information 🔒 FBI - Ransomware Awareness for Holidays and Weekends https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa21-243a 🔒 Why do cyber-attacks increase during holidays? - Security Boulevard https://securityboulevard.com/2022/12/why-do-cyber-attacks-increase-during-h... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/prepare-now-holiday-weekend-cyberattacks-risk... Frank Hatfield CORSA Assistant Director fhatfield@ccao.org<mailto:fhatfield@ccao.org> 614-560-1474 614-220-0209 Fax www.corsa.org<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.corsa.org/__;!!Op5JcThCjWm-UA!zzz1QnDE...> “ The leader in providing Ohio Counties with exceptional value, service, and protection of assets.” CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail message (including any attachments) is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy this message and all attachments.