Just like your other pre-holiday tasks – locking up the house, putting the cat in a cattery and turning on those automatic lights to make it look like you're at home – your business needs you to do a few security steps before taking off.
Make sure that you've updated your incident response plan with contact details for who's on call. Quickly check that the people on call know how the plan works and that they know who to contact if there's an incident (IT service providers, your bank, CERT NZ etc).
It's also a good time to do a backup of your files and data and test it. Then if anything breaks over the break, you've got a fresh copy from before you left.
Find information on how to manage your data.
It's also important that staff know who they can expect to hear from. Malicious actors may use the holiday period as a chance to impersonate members of your business, hoping whoever is on call doesn't notice. Impersonation attempts can result in financial losses or at worst system compromise.
But in general, before you switch off the lights, make sure everyone is on the same page. Then you can enjoy the sunshine and food and relax knowing you left your business in a secure place.
If you experience an online security incident, you can report it to CERT NZ via our online reporting tool.