Cyber Monday Means Loss of Productivity

As Black Friday has come and gone many consumers are excited for Cyber Monday. The only problem? Many Americans who plan to partake in the deals offered online are doing so at work. According to a recent survey done by the staffing firm Adecco,nearly half of American workers (46 percent) plan to make a dent in their holiday shopping during work hours – either through online shopping while at work, shopping on lunch breaks, taking sick days or cutting out a little early periodically. Another similar survey done by Randstad shows that 40% of employees plan to only spend an hour online shopping at work while 1 in 3 plan to spend over 5 hours of their work day shopping online.


The lure of online deals does not only pose a threat to productivity, but it can also expose the corporate network to malware. Malware and spam attacks are often quickly formulated and executed based on current events and popular online happenings. These malicious websites are found as links that are a part of common searches such as "Cyber Monday Deals". 


Since many people will be ordering online the use of online postal tracking will go up as well, because of this hackers will be sending postage and shipping related emails to trick people into downloading malicious attachments. Websense Security Labs cites this type of spam as one of the "Top 5 Malicious Spam Subjects" .


Security Labs has detailed the type of subjects and email contents everyone should be on the lookout for.

• USPS Invoice copy ID46298 (numbers vary)
• FedEx: New Agent File Form, trackid: 1V6ZFZ7FEOHUQ (numbers vary)
• DHL Express Notification for shipment 90176712199 (numbers vary)

The email will look like this:

The moral of the story is to shop at home, be careful, and no matter how good the deal looks, do not suspend judgement to click on a strange looking link. Also remember that shipping companies will never require you to download an email attachment to get information about your packages and if you are still concerned, check their website for accurate and up to date information.