The Holiday Season: A Critical Moment for Cyberattacks

While insurance prepare for year-end closings, performance bonuses, and commercial campaigns, cybercriminals are also refining their strategies.

According to the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2025, the financial and insurance sectors were the most targeted industries of the year, accounting for 29% of all global incidents. The reasons are clear: high-value data, critical operations, and total dependence on digital systems.

During the holiday season, digital traffic multiplies, more policies, more claims, more emails, more transactions. This increase creates the perfect environment for attacks designed not to destroy, but to infiltrate, alter, and manipulate.

1. Festive Financial Insurance Phishing

Typical sign: fake promotions, “loyalty bonus” emails, or seemingly updated policy notices.

Impact: credential theft, unauthorized internal access, and exposure of sensitive data.

Seasonal phishing increases by up to 61% in December, according to Check Point Research (2025).

Attackers exploit the surge in marketing emails to hide fraudulent messages among legitimate communications from insurers and brokers.

Essential prevention:

• Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) across all administrative and customer access points.
• Conduct phishing simulations before and during the festive season.
• Deploy AI-based email filters to detect fraud patterns and spoofed domains.

A simple verification of a link or domain can prevent million-dollar losses and protect brand integrity.

2. Ransomware in Claims Systems

Typical sign: sudden file encryption and complete process shutdowns.

Impact: prolonged operational disruption, financial losses, and reputational pressure.

Ransomware remains the most destructive threat to the insurance sector.

According to the Sophos State of Ransomware 2025, 72% of insurance companies that were attacked reported downtime of more than 7 days, with an average recovery cost of nearly USD 2.5 million.

Essential prevention:

• Maintain encrypted, air-gapped backups ready for immediate restoration.
• Apply automatic patching and active vulnerability management, especially in policy management systems.
• Integrate BRaaS (Business Resilience as a Service) for instant response and periodic recovery testing.

The key is no longer to avoid the attack, but to ensure that operations continue uninterrupted.

3. Social Engineering in Internal Channels

Typical sign: “urgent” access or transfer requests from seemingly internal accounts.

Impact: unauthorized privilege escalation and lateral movement across networks.

Attackers no longer rely solely on external phishing. They now use social engineering within corporate channels, emails, internal messaging, and collaboration platforms like Teams or Slack.

The ENISA Threat Landscape 2025 report found that 1 in 4 internal incidents originate from the psychological manipulation of employees with privileged access.

Essential prevention:

• Establish strict identity verification protocols for all sensitive requests.
• Implement continuous monitoring of privileged accounts with automated alerts.
• Promote a culture of early and safe reporting, where raising an alert is part of standard procedure.

Employee awareness is the actual human firewall.

4. Data Manipulation and Digital Fraud

Typical sign: subtle changes in claim amounts, policy dates, or account statuses.

Impact: flawed decisions, financial losses, and long-term reputational damage.

According to the Allianz Risk Barometer 2025, data manipulation and digital fraud rank fourth among the most concerning threats for global insurers.

Cybercriminals now prefer stealth over disruption: instead of encrypting or stealing data, they modify small variables to alter outcomes, trigger incorrect payments, or falsify records.

Essential prevention:

• Perform automated audits to verify policy and claim modifications.
• Ensure data encryption both in transit and at rest.
• Adopt a Zero Trust architecture with continuous access validation.

Data accuracy defines the credibility of the insurance business. Every undetected change undermines client trust.

From Risk to Resilience with BRaaS

In 2025, insurers adopting continuous digital resilience strategies reduced their exposure to severe incidents by up to 95%, according to IBM X-Force.

Dapango Technologies’ BRaaS (Business Resilience as a Service) aligns with this standard by integrating prevention, protection, and preparedness into a unified, managed strategy.

• Prevention: predictive detection, Zero Trust, and continuous monitoring.
• Protection: encrypted backups, intelligent isolation, and automated recovery.
• Preparedness: simulations, regulatory compliance, and certified resilience frameworks.

Resilience is no longer a backup plan; it’s a competitive advantage that strengthens trust, compliance, and stability.

Trust Also Needs Protection

The busiest time of the year can also be the most vulnerable.

In an industry where trust is the cornerstone of every relationship, cyber resilience becomes the invisible shield that ensures continuity, security, and reputation.

Dapango Technologies Resilience Starts Here.

At Dapango Technologies, we strengthen cybersecurity by up to 95%, guarantee 99.9% uptime, and simplify regulatory compliance, creating the foundation for agile and future-ready growth.

We advance with purpose, technology that builds resilience, innovation that inspires confidence, and strategies designed to endure.

Contact Dapango Technologies today, and let’s build resilience together.