This has been a stellar year for Volkis and we want to extend our thanks for joining us for another wild ride. We had an incredible year finishing up Red Teams, starting a new one, continuing hot streaks gaining Domain Admin and sharing 77,005 Slack messages (15,123 from Alexei!)

Before we shut down for the year (23rd Dec - 3rd Jan) we wanted to share with you a few highlights as well as some timely advice and our new Tshirt Design.

Unsolicited advice from our Managing Director

Staying safe over the holiday period - Matthew Strahan

Christmas day is a time for family and togetherness. It's also the day of the year with the biggest number of security incidents. Attackers don't take a break for Christmas. They also know that it's the time of year we're going to be least aware and they're ready to take advantage!

We all need to tidy up and metaphorically lock our doors over Christmas. For organisations this means applying patches, hardening configs, and ensuring there's no last minute changes that might open holes and get you into trouble over the holiday period. In the extreme, I know of some organisations who turn non-essential systems off during the holiday period - it's impossible to hack a computer that's turned off after all.

It's also a good time to consider how you might respond to incidents when everyone's away. Who would be the person to call? Will anyone pick up if something happens? Make sure that users are aware of this as well. Most incidents are reported by users and if they can't get through to you then you won't hear about it.

Thanks for staying until the end, wishing you all a happy and safe holiday season.

Matt, Alexei & the Volkis team 🐺