The Upcoming U.S. Labor Day Weekend is a Reminder to Avoid Repeating History

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced this week that they have observed an “increase in highly impactful ransomware attacks occurring on holidays and weekends.”

The REvil ransomware gang knocked JBS Foods’ operations offline over the U.S. Memorial Day weekend. REvil struck again over the U.S. Fourth of July holiday weekend, launching a ransomware attack targeting Kaseya, which had a cascading effect on Kaseya’s managed service provider customers and their clients.

It’s not coincidental that these attacks transpired over holiday weekends. Attackers know that it’s difficult for security teams to quickly respond to an incident when away from work, giving them more time to move laterally and lock up or steal data. As Americans and Canadians prepare to break for an extended Labor Day weekend that also coincides with the Rosh Hashanah holiday, we must anticipate that attackers will capitalize on this moment in time.

Preventing Ransomware Before the Long Weekend

There are preventative steps IT security teams should take in the days leading up to holiday and non-holiday weekends. This is not a replacement for a robust ransomware protection strategy but rather a security checklist to complete before the close of business.

Establish an after hours coverage plan – Knowing that attackers are likely to strike over the weekend, it’s important to ensure that someone is monitoring for malicious activity and can respond promptly.
Backup everything, test everything – Before shutting down devices for the weekend, security teams should backup all data and supporting IT infrastructure. Once completed, teams should test the ba ..

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