Cyber Crime and the Festive Season: Is Your Business Peak-Ready?
Peak trading is when retailers can least afford disruption, and cyber criminals know it. From the run-up to Black Friday through to the January sales, phishing volumes climb, fraud spikes and security teams operate on reduced staffing. For UK retailers and e-commerce businesses, the festive season is now the highest-risk period in the cyber security calendar.
In this guide, we look at the threats that matter most to retailers this year, what the latest data tells us, and the practical steps to take before your busiest weeks begin.
Why Does Cyber Crime Rise During the Festive Season?
Three things change at once during peak trading: transaction volumes, attention and staffing.
- More traffic gives attackers cover. Malicious activity is harder to spot when every system is busier than normal.
- People are rushed. Customers and employees face inboxes full of offers, delivery updates and order confirmations, which is ideal ground for social engineering.
- Teams are stretched. Seasonal workers join with limited training, and security staff take well-earned leave over Christmas.
The impact on shoppers is significant. According to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), around £11.8 million was lost to online shopping fraud between 1 November 2024 and 31 January 2025, based on City of London Police data.
Across the whole year, UK Finance reports that purchase scams made up 71% of authorised push payment fraud cases in 2025, with losses rising 20% to £118.1 million. Many of these scams use cloned shops and fake adverts carrying the names of genuine retailers. A scam doesn’t need to touch your systems to damage your brand.
What Can Retailers Learn From the 2025 UK Retail Attacks?
In April 2025, Marks and Spencer disclosed a cyber attack that was first reported over the Easter weekend. The retailer paused online orders, customer personal data was taken, and the retailer estimated an impact of around £300 million on operating profit for 2025/26 before mitigation. Co-op and Harrods were targeted at around the same time.
Three lessons stand out for every retailer, whatever its size:
- Timing is deliberate. Attackers favour holiday weekends, when response is slower and decision-makers are harder to reach.
- The impact is operational, not just data loss. Stock availability, fulfilment and in-store processes were all affected.
- Scale is no protection. Large, well-resourced organisations can still be disrupted for weeks.
There is encouraging news. In the Sophos State of Ransomware 2026 report, retail had the lowest ransom payment rate of any sector, at 32% of organisations whose data was encrypted. Retailers are increasingly choosing to recover rather than pay. That choice only exists if backups have been tested and the response plan has been rehearsed.
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What Are the Biggest Festive Cyber Threats for Retailers in 2026?
1. Brand-Impersonation Phishing
Darktrace recorded a 620% rise in Black Friday-themed phishing during November 2025, with Amazon accounting for 80% of the brand impersonation it analysed. Email is also now the leading route into ransomware: Sophos found malicious emails (26%) and phishing (24%) were the top two root causes, together accounting for half of all incidents.
Retailers face this threat in both directions. Your staff receive fake supplier invoices and delivery notices, while your customers receive emails pretending to come from you.
2. Account Takeover and Credential Attacks
Sophos found that 79% of ransomware attacks started with an identity-based approach. Of the organisations breached through compromised credentials, 97% had multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled in some form. MFA remains essential, but partial coverage and bypass techniques leave gaps.
For retailers, the targets include customer accounts holding stored cards, loyalty points and gift card balances, plus staff logins to e-commerce admin panels. Help desk password resets deserve particular attention, as attackers increasingly use phone and text-based social engineering.
Learn about Identity Threat Detection and Response >
3. Ransomware Timed for When You’re Closed
The Semperis 2025 Ransomware Holiday Risk Report found that 52% of organisations hit by ransomware were attacked on a weekend or holiday, while 78% cut security operations staffing by half or more during those periods. Sophos reported that 58% of ransomware victims cited a lack of people or skills as a factor.
The consequences are costly. Over half of attacks (56%) succeeded in encrypting data, and the average recovery cost, excluding any ransom, reached $1.7 million. A 24/7 Sophos MDR service keeps expert eyes on your environment on Christmas Day as well as every other day.
4. Vulnerable E-Commerce Platforms and Third Parties
The Verizon 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that vulnerability exploitation, at 31%, has become the leading way attackers get in. A third party was involved in 48% of breaches, up from 30% the previous year. Sophos identified exposed applications and systems as the most common entry point (38%).
For retailers, that exposure includes checkout plugins, payment integrations, marketing tools and logistics partners. External Penetration Testing and Web App Security Testing find these weaknesses before attackers do, and HackRisk continuously monitors your external attack surface for new exposure.
5. Seasonal Staff and Human Error
The Verizon DBIR found the human element was involved in 62% of breaches. Sophos reported that human error (35%) was the only operational root cause of ransomware to increase year on year.
Temporary staff often join days before peak, with little time for onboarding. Short, practical awareness sessions on phishing, payment fraud and verification procedures make a measurable difference. Social Engineering Testing shows you how your teams respond under realistic pressure.
“Every year we see the same pattern. Retailers bring in a change freeze for peak, which is sensible, but the security work that should happen before the freeze gets squeezed out. The businesses that come through December well have tested their external exposure in October, know exactly who is on call on Christmas Eve, and have already rehearsed what happens if the tills stop working.”
– Wayne Price, Commercial Director
Is Your Business Ready for Peak Trading? A Festive Cyber Security Checklist
Work through these steps before your change freeze begins:
- Patch first, freeze second. Apply critical updates to internet-facing systems, e-commerce platforms and plugins before the freeze.
- Close MFA gaps. Enforce MFA on every admin, remote access and e-commerce account, and tighten identity checks for help desk resets.
- Confirm 24/7 coverage. Know who is watching alerts on bank holidays and weekends, and who has authority to act.
- Lock down email. Enforce DMARC, SPF and DKIM so attackers cannot easily send email as your brand.
- Train seasonal staff. Give every temporary worker a short phishing and fraud briefing on day one.
- Test your backups. Confirm backups are offline or immutable, and that you can restore within your target time.
- Rehearse the worst day. Run a Tabletop Exercise built around a Christmas-week scenario.
- Plan the response. Keep an incident response plan with out-of-hours contacts, and consider a retainer.
- Watch for imitators. Monitor for lookalike domains and fake shops using your brand, and tell customers what you will never ask them for.
- Clean up in January. Remove seasonal accounts and access as soon as contracts end.
How Can Cyberlab Support Retailers Over the Festive Season?
- We are a CREST-, CHECK- and NCSC-accredited cyber security partner trusted by more than 1,200 organisations.
- Our penetration testers assess e-commerce platforms, payment journeys and external infrastructure ahead of peak.
- HackRisk provides continuous visibility of your external attack surface and exposed data.
- Our Sophos MDR service delivers round-the-clock threat detection and response, including bank holidays.
- Social engineering testing and tabletop exercises prepare your people for realistic attacks.
- Through our partnership with CYFOR Secure, we provide expert Incident Response when it matters most.
Get Peak-Ready with a Free Posture Assessment
The best time to strengthen your defences is before your busiest weeks, not during them. Understand your security risks and how to fix them, with a free 30-minute guided posture assessment covering ten key areas backed by NCSC guidance.
CyberLab is a CREST-, CHECK- and NCSC-accredited cyber security partner trusted by 1,200+ UK organisations. Protecting the nation, business and people.