It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year… Unless You’re Hit by Ransomware

Every retailer knows the holiday season is the make-or-break moment of the year. It’s when revenue targets are hit, customer loyalty is built, and market share is won. But for cybercriminals, it’s also open season.

While your teams prepare for Black Friday and Christmas, cyber criminals are already rubbing their hands with glee. They know your systems will be stretched, staff potentially distracted, and downtime is more expensive than ever. For them, the festive period is all about taking. And they are counting on you being unprepared. 

The Holiday Cybercrime Surge

You only have to look at previous years to understand the scale of the threat. Ramsonware continues to surge month by month, but the holiday season escalates dramatically. In 2024, phishing attacks during Black Friday week spiked by 692% relative to early November. December 2024 posted the highest monthly volume of global ransomware attacks ever recorded. And in the same year, a study of retail ransomware recovery found the average cost hit US$2.73 million. 

But 2025 is different. The retail sector has already been targeted heavily during the year, with retailers like Marks and Spencer suffering devastating breaches. Online orders ground to a halt. Automated stock management collapsed. Fresh food had to be tracked manually, and entire fulfilment teams reverted to pen and paper. Over £300 million of losses in operational costs, stock write-offs, and reputational damage.

And they’re not alone. In recent months, Co-op, Adidas, Harrods, Pandora, and other high-profile names have confirmed breaches involving stolen credentials, payment data, and supplier compromise. 

With peak trading just beginning, the question isn’t whether attackers will strike, it’s how bad the damage will be.

The Real Threat: Data in Transit

Most organizations still rely on perimeter-based defenses, like firewalls, intrusion detection, and endpoint protection, to stop attackers. But those controls assume the network itself is trustworthy. It isn’t. Once an attacker gets inside, whether through stolen credentials or a compromised third party, your data becomes theirs.

88% of breaches now involve credential misuse or phishing. That’s why traditional security architectures fail during periods of high activity. They protect the walls while leaving the data inside completely exposed. 

The question isn’t if the perimeter will be breached; it’s how long your data will stay intact once it is.

Downtime Is the Real Cost

When ransomware hits, the first thing you lose is time. And especially in Q4, time is money.

Every minute offline is a missed transaction, an abandoned cart, or a delayed shipment.

IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report estimates the average recovery time at 277 days, with costs exceeding $4.88 million per incident. But that number balloons in retail’s golden quarter. When orders flood in and logistics are maxed out, a few hours of downtime can snowball into supply chain chaos. 

No retailer wants headlines like: “Shoppers Left Empty-Handed After Cyberattack Cripples Retail Giant.”

And don’t forget the long-term impact too: customer trust lost in December rarely returns in January.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Protecting the Data Itself

Most breaches don’t happen because data is stored unsafely. They happen while it’s moving between systems, into the cloud, across suppliers.

That’s the gap attackers exploit.

Certes’ Data Protection and Risk Mitigation (DPRM) changes the game by protecting the data itself rather than the network it travels through. Unlike traditional encryption tied to network devices, DPRM protects every packet of data in transit, ensuring it remains unreadable, unaltered, and useless to anyone without authorization, even if the network is compromised.

This means your payment systems, customer transactions, and backup data remain protected from interception, tampering, and exfiltration. DPRM also enforces key ownership, ensuring compliance with regulations like CJIS that demand organizations retain full control over their cryptographic assets.

And it’s future-ready. With post-quantum protection already integrated, Certes safeguards data against the next wave of threats, ensuring what’s protected today remains secure tomorrow.

Don’t Let Cybercriminals Write Their Own Wish List

Right now, cyber attackers are preparing their own holiday hits. They’re counting on businesses being too busy, too distracted, or too reliant on outdated tools to stop them.

The ones who’ll survive the season aren’t the ones with the biggest cybersecurity budgets. They’re the ones protecting what matters: their data.

Certes gives your organization full control over your data, even when everything else is under pressure. That’s how you keep transactions flowing, customers loyal, and compliance intact, even when the worst-case scenario hits.

Ready to make your data untouchable this holiday season?

Talk to us about real ransomware resilience, compliance protection, and post-quantum readiness, before attackers make the first move.