Each holiday season brings a familiar mix of pressure and celebration, and an open door for cybercriminals. As employees rush to close books, approve payments, and manage year-end chaos, attackers see opportunity. A single unverified email or text can empty accounts in minutes and compromise your company’s reputation for months.
Consider this: Last December, a company’s accounts payable clerk received an urgent text, apparently from the CEO: “Buy $3,000 in Apple gift cards for clients, scratch the backs and email the codes.” She complied before verifying. The cards vanished. The loss was thousands. That story is bad enough but not unique.
In the same month, a far larger-scale con struck Orion S.A., a Luxembourg-based chemical manufacturer. An employee accepted routine-looking email requests for wire transfers. The requests seemed legitimate, followed normal cadence, and came from trusted names. Without question, they wired money, until they discovered the scale of the fraud: $60 million siphoned off to cyber-criminals. More than half the company’s annual profit, gone.
If you believe your business is “too small” to be a target—think again. According to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), Americans lost $16.6 billion to cyber-fraud in 2024, up 33 % from the prior year.—IC3 Report
Within that, losses from business email compromise (BEC) totalled approximately $2.77 billion across 21,442 reported incidents. For firms in California alone, the 2023 reported losses from BEC topped $412 million.
Why the holiday season? Mostly because your teams are distracted. They’re under pressure to close deals, issue invoices, buy recognition gifts, and finish the year strong. Attackers know that. They count on it.
Here are the top tactics that hit businesses during the season, and how to defend:
“Your Boss Needs Gift Cards” (The Text Trap)
Impostors pose as senior executives, texting staff to buy gift cards, scratch off backs, and send codes. That small-scale chaos adds up fast. In early 2024, gift-card schemes made up 37.9 % of BEC incidents.
Prevention: Build a strict policy—no gift cards by text or email. Require at least two approvals from separate people.
Invoice & Payment Switch-Ups (The Big Money Play)
Fraudsters hijack vendor email threads or send “updated payment details” right when year-end invoices are due. For example, a Massachusetts town lost nearly half a million dollars this way in June 2024.
Prevention: For any banking change, pick up the phone and verify using a number already on file. Set a threshold (e.g., changes over $5,000) that triggers a live verification.
Fake Shipping & Delivery Notices
Emails pose as carriers (UPS/FedEx/USPS) with links to “reschedule delivery.” Staff click the link, and malware is launched.
Prevention: Train employees to navigate carrier sites directly (no click-through links). Bookmark official tracking pages.
Malicious “Holiday Party” Attachments
“Holiday_Schedule.pdf” or “Party_List.xls” may look innocent, but may hide malware or ransomware.
Prevention: Disable macros, scan attachments, reinforce a culture of verifying unexpected files—even from internal senders.
Bogus Holiday Fundraisers
Attackers mimic charities or fake “company match” campaigns to steal money or data.
Prevention: Maintain an approved charity list and require donations to flow via verified portals.
The tools designed to streamline business (email, online banking, digital payments) are the very ones scammers exploit. These are not amateur “Nigerian prince” emails. These are sophisticated social-engineering schemes. For example, recent data show BEC attacks have surged by 42% in early 2024 compared to prior years. An SME today may have a 70% probability of experiencing a BEC attack in any given week.
Awareness training makes a difference. Organizations doing regular phishing simulations reduce risk significantly. And yet many firms, especially smaller ones, still rely solely on passwords. Meanwhile, multi-factor authentication (MFA) can block over 99% of unauthorized login attempts.
Before the next holiday surge, take these steps:
The Two-Person Rule: Any financial transaction above your threshold must be confirmed verbally through a separate channel.
Gift Card Policy: No gift cards requested by text or email—ever. Require a written policy and communication.
Vendor Verification: For any banking change, call a known number, not one in the email.
Enable MFA: On email accounts, banking platforms, and cloud services.
Holiday Awareness Briefing: Run a short session with your teams summarising these five scams and examples. Real-life stories resonate.
While a headline like “$60 million stolen” gets attention, smaller firms often suffer more insidiously:
Operations grind to a halt during peak season.
Productivity drops as staff respond to the crisis.
Customer trust erodes if data-sharing or invoices are compromised.
Insurance premiums spike after a cyber incident.
According to recent insurer data, average BEC claim cost rose 23% in 2024 to about $35,000, with losses often far higher for funds-transfer frauds. —Source: Insurance Journal
The holiday season should be a time of celebration and growth, not cleaning up wire fraud. A team huddle, clear policies, and layered protections can keep attackers out of your books. The employee at Orion could have prevented that $60 million loss with a simple verification phone call. You can avoid being the next cautionary tale.
For organizations in Florida and California, where digital payment adoption and remote work remain high, the stakes are even greater. Both states consistently rank among the top in business email compromise losses nationwide.
Want to make sure your team is locked down before the next surge? Book a 15-minute discovery call with us at KairosIT. We’ll walk you through practical steps you can implement this week. Protect your business. Preserve your holiday momentum. Don’t let cyber-criminals steal your success.
Schedule your free security assessment
Because the best gift you can give your business this holiday season is peace of mind.