Who’s on call while everyone is on holiday?
Attackers like holidays because nobody is watching. Agree now who answers the phone in July and August.
Ransomware groups have long preferred long weekends and holiday periods. Fewer people are watching alerts, decisions take longer, and the one person who knows the backup system is on a beach.
Before the summer break starts:
- Write a simple rota: who is on call each week, and who backs them up.
- Make sure the on-call person can actually reach the admin tools from where they’ll be, with MFA that works abroad.
- Share one page with key numbers: IT provider, internet provider, insurer, incident response firm, management.
- Check that alerts from backups, antivirus and the firewall go to someone who is working, not to a holiday autoreply.
- Don’t schedule big changes or migrations for the week before people leave.
And tell your IT provider your holiday dates. Their coverage may be thinner than you think too.