The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the White House have issued warnings to companies and organizations, urging them to be on the lookout for cyberattacks ahead of the Christmas holidays.
CISA has released “CISA Insights: Preparing For and Mitigating Potential Cyber Threats” to provide critical infrastructure leaders with steps to proactively strengthen their organization’s operational resilience against sophisticated threat actors.
In a letter sent Thursday, White House Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyberspace and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger and National Cyber Director Chris Inglis said that breaches typically increase on national holidays because hackers know that security operations centers are often understaffed.
Cybersecurity officials issued a similar message earlier this year after major attacks on Colonial Pipeline and Kaseya that took place over Memorial Day Weekend and July 4th weekend, respectively.
The two organizations urged organizations to ensure all patches are up to date, have logs enabled, and have data backups in place. They also urged them to quickly investigate any incidents, change passwords, enforce multi-factor authentication, manage IT security programs, and educate employees about phishing.
CISA's warning focused on owners and operators of critical infrastructure, telling them that security staff briefings should be done now in time for Christmas.
Organizations should ensure that all cybersecurity best practices are followed and that current cybersecurity threats and malicious techniques are monitored.
CISA even said that the threshold for information sharing should be lowered and any cybersecurity incidents and anomalous activity should be reported immediately to CISA or the FBI.
Information source: zdnet.com
