Thanksgiving is meant to be a time of gratitude, family, and celebration. Yet for organizations, it’s also one of the most vulnerable points in the calendar. Cybercriminals and malicious insiders know that IT teams are stretched thin, employees are distracted, and retail systems are overloaded. The result is a seasonal spike in insider misuse and external exploitation that can leave lasting damage.
Why Insider Threats Surge During the Holidays
The holiday season creates a unique risk environment:
- Reduced staffing: Security operations centers often run on skeleton crews, leaving fewer eyes on alerts.
- Distracted employees: Staff rushing to finish tasks before time off are more likely to overlook phishing attempts or skip protocols.
- Transaction overload: Retail and logistics systems are flooded with activity, making anomalies harder to spot.
- Remote work risks: Employees connecting from home or while traveling may use unsecured networks or personal devices.
- Financial urgency: Year‑end closings and holiday sales overlap, creating pressure that attackers exploit with fraudulent requests.
Modern Holiday Threats
In 2025, fraud campaigns are starting earlier than ever. KasadaIQ tracked a 92 percent increase in malicious configurations targeting retail and a 400 percent increase against accommodation industries between January and October. These campaigns often launch 10 to 14 days before Thanksgiving, meaning organizations that only heighten monitoring during the holiday week are already behind.
Account takeover is the fastest growing fraud channel. More than 311 million stolen accounts were listed across dark web marketplaces this year, with 63 percent belonging to retail brands. Fortinet’s holiday threat report highlights how attackers exploit stored payment data, loyalty points, and shopping carts, often timing their campaigns around Thanksgiving when accounts are loaded with value. Over 18,000 new holiday‑themed domains were registered in just three months, with hundreds flagged as malicious.
Insiders play a role here too. Employees with access to loyalty programs, payment systems, or customer data can exploit the chaos of the season to siphon off value. In some cases, insiders collaborate with external actors, providing credentials or system knowledge that make large scale fraud campaigns possible.
Real‑World Holiday Insider and Cyber Cases
- Stop & Shop Thanksgiving disruption (2024): The grocery chain’s parent company faced a cyber incident during peak Thanksgiving shopping, leaving stores with severe inventory issues. Insider negligence in patching was cited as a contributing factor.
- Leaksmas (2023): A dark web event where millions of personal records were dumped during the Christmas season. While primarily external, insiders with privileged access often facilitate such leaks, either intentionally or through poor security hygiene.
- Retailer attacks (2023): Staples, Ace Hardware, and Clorox were all hit during the holiday season. Investigations suggested insider lapses in access control and monitoring contributed to the breaches.
- Hospital ransomware on Thanksgiving Day (2023): Hospitals in three states had to divert patients after attackers locked critical systems. Insider negligence in patch management and weak access controls were cited as enabling factors.
Seasonal Insider Threat Patterns
- Phishing disguised as holiday offers: Fake package delivery notices and charity scams spike around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
- Insider misuse of retail systems: Employees with access to loyalty programs or stored payment data can exploit accounts during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
- Credential stuffing and account takeovers: Attackers often use stolen credentials during Thanksgiving week, when accounts are loaded with shopping carts and stored value.
- Finance team impersonation: AI driven deepfakes and voice cloning are increasingly used to impersonate executives during holiday downtime, tricking finance teams into authorizing fraudulent transfers.
- Social media oversharing: Employees posting travel plans or purchases give insiders and attackers clues about when systems are least monitored.
How Organizations Can Defend Themselves
- Enforce strict offboarding protocols before holidays to prevent disgruntled insiders from retaining access.
- Monitor for holiday timed anomalies in finance and access logs.
- Deploy AI driven defenses to counter synthetic identities and impersonation.
- Educate staff about seasonal phishing and scams, especially those disguised as holiday deals or charity requests.
- Require multi factor authentication and secure remote connections for all employees.
- Ensure backups are current and tested, so ransomware cannot cripple operations during peak season.
Closing Thoughts
Thanksgiving should be a time for family and gratitude, not scrambling to contain breaches. History shows that insider threats and cybercrime thrive during the holidays. By learning from past incidents and preparing for modern AI driven risks, organizations can keep the season secure. The lesson is clear: insider threats don’t take holidays off, and neither should your defenses.
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