As Christmas approaches, most businesses quite rightly start to slow down. Projects wrap up, inboxes get (slightly) quieter, and people look forward to a well-earned break. The problem is that while your team is winding down, there are two things that won’t: attackers, and your compliance obligations.
While this may seem like a ‘doom and gloom’ viewpoint, it reflects the reality of today’s digital world. Standards and frameworks like Cyber Essentials, ISO 27001, SOC 2, and others all assume that controls operate continuously, not just normal working hours. They don’t say “MFA must be enabled except in December” or “logs must be monitored, but not bank holidays”. If your security posture weakens, or drops out of compliance during the festive period, you don’t get to retroactively claim it was a one-off because it was Christmas.
This doesn’t mean you need to run Christmas Day incident drills, or stay glued to your device while opening presents. It does mean you should be deliberate about how you manage risk during a period when discipline naturally slips and fewer people are around to spot potential problems.
At OneClickComply, we fully understand that the last thing most teams want to be doing in December is arguing about firewall rules or access reviews. The aim is not to turn Christmas into an end-of-year compliance brawl, but to make a few smart moves so you can switch off with fewer worries.
The “Christmas slowdown” problem
The main risk at Christmas isn’t a new category of attack, it’s the way organisations relax their own routines.
As deadlines approach and people try to clear their to-do lists, corners are more likely to be cut. Patches get postponed. Administration tasks are left “for the new year”. Access reviews slip. Odd-looking alerts are quietly dismissed because nobody wants to start something big on the 20th of December. Routine governance tasks that support compliance, like checking backup reports, reviewing logs, documenting changes, and updating risk registers, are often the first to go on the “deal with next year” pike.
At the same time, the business usually runs on a reduced team or skeleton crew. Key technical staff, approvers and decision-makers are often away. The people who really understand how your systems fit together might be on a plane, trying to switch off with their families, or offline entirely. If an incident does occur, it may take longer to recognise, escalate and contain, particularly if roles and responsibilities haven’t been clearly assigned in advance.
From an attacker’s point of view, this combination is ideal. It means weaker oversight, slower response, and people distracted by other priorities.
From a compliance perspective, the time of year doesn’t matter. If a control is supposed to operate all year round, e.g. that critical updates are applied within a given timeframe, or that events are monitored, then failing to do so in December is still a failure. If that leads to an incident, or is exposed in an audit, the argument of “we were winding down for Christmas” is not a defence, but rather clear evidence of poor implementation and discipline.
Seasonal phishing, scams and social engineering
The festive period brings its own style of phishing and fraud. Attackers know there will be a surge in delivery notifications, order confirmations, e-gift cards, vouchers and “last chance” offers. They also know that staff are more likely to be using work devices for a mix of work and personal activity, checking emails on the move, or trying to clear their inbox quickly before logging off.
That creates a perfect environment for social engineering. A slightly rushed finance admin is more likely to process a convincing fake invoice. Someone working from home is more likely to click on a “missed parcel” link. A senior leader trying to get things done before annual leave may quickly approve a request they would normally question.
Technical controls do help prevent/mitigate these situations, but behaviour still matters. A short, well-timed reminder in early December can make a real difference. Rather than another long training session, a clear message that says “you will see more fake delivery and payment emails this month - please slow down before clicking or approving anything unusual” can help bring awareness to this problem in a way that employees may actually absorb.
Again, from a compliance point of view, the standard doesn’t care if an incident stemmed from a “festive-themed phishing email.” If credentials are stolen, data is leaked, or a fraudulent payment it made, your obligations (contractual, regulatory, and under the framework you may be working towards) remain exactly the same.
Reduced monitoring and incident response
Most organisations have fewer people watching dashboards and alerts over Christmas. Monitoring continues “in theory”, but in practice there is often less capacity to investigate anything that looks suspicious. This is especially true for smaller teams and MSPs that don’t have 24/7 coverage.
The worst-case scenario for many is not that an alert triggers, it’s that nobody is sure what to do with it.
Before the holidays, it’s worth making sure a few basics are nailed down.
Who is responsible if something serious happens? How do people contact them if your usual channels are impacted? What types of event are important enough to interrupt someone’s holiday?
This doesn’t need to become a formal on-call scheme if that’s not realistic for your organisation. Even a simple rota, a backup contact method, and clear criteria of “call me if X or Y happens” makes a big difference.
Any framework that touches incident management, ISO 27001, SOC 2, NIST CSF, and even Cyber Essentials at a basic level, expects security events to be handled in a timely and structured way. If a serious incident happens on 27 December and isn’t properly dealt with until mid-January, the fact that people were away will not make the impact, or your reporting obligations, go away.
For MSPs and IT providers, the situation is multiplied. If your monitoring or response processes slow down, your clients’ risk, and their compliance posture, is affected too. Being explicit with clients about what you can and can’t do over Christmas is part of managing that responsibly.
Third-party and supply chain considerations
Your risk over Christmas isn’t just about what your organisation does. It’s also about what your key suppliers and partners do.
Many third parties change their operating patterns in December. Support hours may be shorter. Change freezes may delay fixes. Conversely, some suppliers push through end-of-year updates quickly. If you rely on a particular cloud service, MSP, payment provider or platform, a problem on their side over Christmas can easily turn into a problem on yours.
If you are working towards standards that emphasise supplier risk, such as ISO 27001, SOC 2 or NCSC CAF, this will form a crucial part of your overall security posture. You’re expected to understand critical dependencies between your organisation and your suppliers, and how incidents involving them would be handled.
A proactive approach is to identify your “critical suppliers” ahead of any holiday periods, and contact out ahead of time to confirm emergency contacts, whether they have any planned maintenance or reduced cover, and how their plans interact with your own plans or projects.
Compliance doesn’t care that a key vendor was on skeleton staff, it cares that you understood and managed the risk associated with this.
Tips for Christmas: staying secure without cancelling the break
We know that nobody wants to spend December buried in spreadsheets and policy documents. So rather than suggesting a long list of new tasks, here are some focused, realistic tips that can make a meaningful difference without taking over your festive period.
First, treat early December as your “security tidy-up” window. Block out small amounts of time to check that MFA is enabled on key systems, that critical updates have been applied, and that backups are running and have been tested recently. You’re not trying to overhaul everything, just making sure the basics won’t let you down.
Second, send a short Christmas security note to staff. Keep it friendly and to the point, as mentioned above. More fake delivery emails, more shopping-related phishing, more “urgent” payment requests. Encourage people to think before clicking links, double-check sender addresses, and ask for a second opinion on anything involving money or credentials. One clear page or short training video will be remembered far more easily than a 40-page slide deck.
Third, agree “what if” rules in advance. Decide who is the contact for serious issues, how they can be reached, and what kinds of events justify interrupting someone’s break. Sharing this with relevant team members helps remove doubt, and makes people feel more comfortable making a call if something looks wrong.
Lastly, be deliberate about change. If you’re planning releases or infrastructure changes near the holidays, challenge whether they really need to happen at this time. If they do, make sure there is a effective roll-back option, and that there is always someone available who understands what changed. Typically, delaying non-essential changes till the New Year is often the safest choice for businesses.
None of this is about making Christmas feel like an audit. It’s about putting just enough structure in place that security and compliance don’t unravel the moment the office lights go off.
How OneClickComply can support you over the Christmas period
For many organisations, the challenge is not willingness, it’s visibility and resources. It’s hard to address risks you can’t see, and even harder when you’re short on time and people.
That’s where OneClickComply is designed to help. By continuously scanning your environment, it highlights technical gaps that matter from both a security and compliance perspective. With our OneClickFix technology, these issues can be resolved automatically, turning days of manual remediation into a handful of clicks.
The platform also includes built-in ISMS capabilities, such as asset registers, vendor risk logs, and incident records, you gain a centralised view of what you have, who you rely on, and evidence to show your due-diligence. That makes it easier to decide what to prioritise before the break, and it gives you solid evidence to show that controls are still operating, even over quieter periods.
With additional features like built-in device vulnerability management, penetration testing, automated policy creation, and customer/security questionnaire automation, OneClickComply helps you achieve compliance, maintain your organisation’s security, and prove alignment with standards and frameworks such as Cyber Essentials, SOC 2, ISO 27001, CIS, and more!
All wrapped in a central, accessible, easy-to-use platform.
Closing Thoughts
Compliance frameworks don’t pause for the holidays, and neither do most attackers. But with a small amount of preparation, stabilising change, covering the basics, clarifying responsibilities, and improving visibility, you can go into the festive period confident that your security and compliance posture will hold.
If you treat the run-up to Christmas as a natural checkpoint, a breathing space to reflect on your current approach, rather than an excuse to relax controls, you give your organisation the chance to enjoy the break, while your defences quietly keep doing their job.