Whilst your teams rotate around their annual leave – the holiday season doesn’t mean downtime for all. For many cyber criminals it’s an opportunity.
As your managed IT partner, we want to make sure the summer months don’t become the riskiest ones. Here are a few ways in which your care home can stay cyber secure whilst your team members still enjoy their downtime.
Why cyber criminals love holidays
- Infrequent inbox monitoring – successful cyber-attacks spike around holiday periods, mostly because suspicious activity takes longer to spot when people are out of the office or they’re rushing to clear their inbox before or after any time off.
- Out of office messages – attackers also exploit automated out-of-office replies. They know exactly who is unavailable, until when, and who to contact instead. As a result, they can script a well-timed and fairly accurate email claiming to be from a director ‘travelling with limited access’ asking for an urgent payment to be made.
- Catching up on emails when away – public WiFi in airports, hotels and cafés can be convenient but comes with risks. Hackers can easily intercept your data, steal passwords, or infect your device with harmful software. And if you take any devices on holiday they’re more likely to be lost or stolen giving easy access to all of the information on it.
Top tips for summer security in your care home
Here’s some best practice from the team at GHM Care before you set that out-of-office:
- Don’t rush – verify any requests to change bank details, make an urgent payment or share login information.
- Minimise out-of-office messages – state you’re away and give a general contact point, but avoid dates (if you can), where you are or a full list of who’s covering what whilst you’re away.
- Protect devices if they’re away from the office – use a VPN rather than public WiFi, make sure screens lock automatically, and keep a close eye on your devices. If a home device goes missing, report it to either your IT manager or us immediately – we can quickly lock down any risk.
- Update and backup – keep up with system and security updates over the holidays. Schedule them with colleagues or us if you’re away for an extended time. As part of your managed service we keep updates running behind the scenes, but don’t postpone restarts or defer updates whilst you’re away.
Our security tools run 24/7, but most successful attacks begin with a single person being caught off guard. If anything ever feels off — an unexpected email, a strange login alert, a lost or missing device — contact our support desk straight away.