For most UK retailers, the final quarter determines the success of the year. Whilst sales teams prepare for record-breaking volumes, threat actors are quietly doing the same. Every promotion, flash sale or Black Friday campaign is an invitation to test defences.
The difference between a smooth season and a costly outage comes down to simply one thing: PREPARATION.
When every minute matters
Attackers know exactly when to strike. They wait until systems are running at full capacity, staff are stretched thin, and downtime costs are at their highest.
During peak trading, bot-driven credential attacks, payment fraud and general compromise attempts all rise sharply. The ability to respond quickly and decisively can be the difference between a brief disruption and a full-scale incident.
Your operational cyber checklist
Prepare before promotion.
Run a targeted Red Team engagement focused on your sales environment. Map each stage from browsing to checkout and identify where a small disruption could halt trading.
Monitor what truly matters.
Track operationally critical metrics such as payment success rates, login anomalies and unusual API behaviour.
Test your failovers.
Simulate CDN, payment gateway and third-party outages. Your teams should be able to switch routes and restore such services within minutes. If you’re aware of a potential issue, how to recover from it and more importantly how to do it during a live incident, which will be significantly easier.
Secure your supply chain.
Review vendor access, fulfilment portals and marketing integrations. These external points are now common attack vectors.
Real resilience is calm under pressure
A confident team, backed by rehearsed processes, is your best defence. When staff know who leads, how to communicate, and what to prioritise, incidents stay contained. Customers may never even notice a problem, and your brand reputation remains intact.
Schedule a PULSE Red Team exercise before your next peak trading window. Prism Infosec will replicate current attack methods against UK retail operations, validate your defences, and provide a detailed improvement roadmap managed through Luxis AI.
