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Holiday Hackers: How to Safeguard Your Service Desk . Hackers really don’t take holidays, but they will take advantage of them.  Consumer traffic rises sharply during the holidays. Correspondingly, the scope and severity of cyberattacks also increase, with one cybersecurity firm reporting a 200 percent jump in attacks targeting e-commerce businesses  right before Christmas. Many of these cyberattacks will zero in on the service or help desk to gain entry into network systems.  Recovering accounts because of forgotten passwords is one of the high-risk events in the identity management life cycle, making the service desk a likely target during the holiday season.  Why Holidays are Susceptible to Cyberattacks For hackers, all these factors create an ideal situation for launching service desk attacks. For example: Why the Service Desk is a Prime Holiday Cyberattack Target The service desk is typically the first point of contact for end users who are unable to login to their account or access needed company resources. The service desk can perform or facilitate critical, high-risk functions such as resetting passwords, creating new accounts (including administrative accounts) or eliminating multi-factor authentication for users who have been locked out of their accounts.   This capability of bypassing security policies is a double-edged sword: While serving as the first line of defense against hackers and point of contact for employees, the service desk also serves as a back door to your network through social engineering.  Common Attacks Involving the Service Desk Tips To Keep Your Service Desk Safe Get Secure for the Holiday Season and Moving Forward with Specops Cybersecurity has to be a continuous priority for all organizations. Equipping your service desk employees with tools like Specops uReset and Secure Service Desk can help ensure that they are presenting the best defense against hackers who want to take advantage of them during the holiday season.  Get in touch with Specops to learn much more about the password security management options that are available to you. Sponsored and written by Specops Software.