At first glance, the water seems perfectly still.
That's exactly what makes Shark Week so gripping every year: the real danger isn't on the surface. It's already moving beneath it.
Cybercriminals work the same way. Today's threats are built to blend into everyday business activity until the moment an invoice gets paid, money is redirected or critical systems fail.
And in the summer, when routines change, employees travel and oversight naturally thins out, attackers know many businesses are paying closer to vacations than vulnerabilities.
Here are three threats they're relying on right now.
1. Fraudulent invoices and vendor impersonation
Attackers don't need to break into your network when one convincing email can do the job.
This is known as business email compromise (BEC), and it works by posing as a vendor, supplier or executive your team already recognizes and trusts.
The message looks legitimate, someone processes the payment and by the time the mistake is discovered, the money is gone.
These scams surge during vacation season for a simple reason: the person who normally approves payments is out, so requests get redirected to someone less familiar with the process. Temporary backups are more likely to accept urgency at face value, and criminals count on that hesitation gap.
The best defense is easy to put in place: create a verification step for every financial request submitted by email. A quick callback to a trusted number, not the one in the message, can stop most of these fraud attempts before they succeed.
2. Phishing campaigns aimed at distracted employees
Phishing succeeds because it is designed around human behavior, especially when people are rushed, distracted or juggling too much at once.
Cybercriminals time these attacks carefully. A busy employee sees a password reset alert and clicks without thinking. Another receives a text that appears to come from IT. An email lands just before a meeting asking for urgent wire approval. In the moment, verification feels slower than action.
The strongest protection isn't just technology; it's a security-minded culture.
Employees should feel empowered to pause when something doesn't look right:
· An unexpected login request
· A payment instruction that came out of nowhere
· A link in an email they weren't expecting
Attackers depend on speed. When your team slows down and checks first, you take away one of their biggest advantages.
3. Third-party risks that spread quickly
If a vendor with access to your environment is compromised, the threat does not stay with them. It can move straight into your business through every connected system, account and integration they touch.
This is supply chain exposure, and most organizations have far more of it than they realize. Connected software, service providers with stored credentials and contractors whose access was never removed after a project ended can all create unseen pathways into your network.
Outsourcing a service does not outsource responsibility.
To understand your supply chain exposure, you need clear answers to three questions:
1. Which vendors can access your data or systems?
2. What are they connected to?
3. Who inside your business is responsible for managing those relationships?
If those answers are unclear, your risk is higher than you think.
By the time it's obvious, it's already in motion
Sharks don't announce themselves, and neither do the cybercriminals targeting your business today.
The organizations that get hit are not always the ones that ignore obvious red flags. Often, they're the ones that assume everything is fine simply because nothing looks wrong yet.
Summer is when schedules loosen, attention drifts and the water looks calmest. It's also when attackers stay busiest.
We help businesses get a clear view of their exposure across vendors, employee behavior and daily operations before a problem turns into a costly incident.
If you don't know where your business stands, schedule a Discovery Call.
Click here or give us a call at 336-310-0277 to schedule your free Discovery Call.
