Summer is one of the highest-risk periods of the year for business cyberattacks — and the three threats most likely to hit your business right now are vendor impersonation, phishing against distracted employees, and supply chain exposure through third-party vendors.
On the surface, the water looks calm.
That’s what makes Shark Week fascinating every year. The danger is never visible on the surface. It’s what’s already moving underneath.
Cybercriminals operate the same way. The threats businesses face right now are designed to blend in with normal operations — right up until the moment something breaks, money moves, or systems go down.
During the summer months, when schedules shift, employees travel, and oversight gets thinner, attackers know businesses are paying less attention. And the numbers back that up — according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, business email compromise alone accounted for over $2.9 billion in reported losses in a single year. That’s not a niche threat. That’s the most financially damaging cybercrime category the FBI tracks.
Here are three ways attackers are circling your business right now.
1. Fake Invoices and Vendor Impersonation
Attackers don’t need to hack anything. In many cases, they just need to send one believable email.
This is called business email compromise (BEC), and it works by impersonating a vendor, supplier, or executive your team already trusts. The email arrives looking completely normal. Someone on your team pays the “vendor.” And by the time anyone realizes the request wasn’t legitimate, the money is gone.
Here’s what this looks like in practice. An office manager gets an email from what appears to be a familiar subcontractor. The email explains that their banking information has changed and asks for the next payment to go to a new account. The email is professional, references a real project, and even uses the contractor’s name. The payment goes out. The real contractor calls two weeks later asking where their money is.
These attacks spike during vacation season for a simple reason. When the person who normally approves payments is out, requests get rerouted to people who don’t always know what normal looks like. Temporary stand-ins are less likely to question urgency — and attackers know it.
The fix is straightforward: build a verification process for any financial request that comes in by email. A quick confirmation call to a known number — not the number listed in the email — is enough to stop most of these before they go anywhere. At Southwest Networks, we help businesses build these internal controls before they need them, not after.
2. Phishing Attacks That Target Distracted Employees
Phishing works because it’s engineered around how people behave when they’re busy.
According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, phishing and social engineering are consistently responsible for a significant share of confirmed data breaches year over year. That number doesn’t go down because attackers keep getting better at timing their attacks — and summer is prime time.
A distracted employee sees a password reset notification and clicks the link. Someone gets a text that looks like it came from IT. An email lands right before a meeting asking for urgent approval on a wire transfer. Nobody stops to verify because stopping feels like losing time.
Cybercriminals design these moments deliberately.
The most effective protection here isn’t a software solution — it’s culture. Employees need to feel comfortable slowing down when something seems off:
- An unexpected login request
- A payment instruction that came out of nowhere
- A link in an email they weren’t expecting
- A text message from IT asking for credentials
- An urgent request from an executive they’ve never received before
Speed is a weapon attackers use against you. Slowing down is how you take it away from them.
This is also where employee awareness training pays off. Not the once-a-year compliance checkbox kind — the kind that keeps security visible and gives your team a clear, simple process to follow when something feels wrong. If you want to understand where your team’s awareness currently stands, a free assessment is a good place to start.
3. Third-Party Risks That Travel Fast
When a vendor with access to your systems gets compromised, the threat doesn’t stay contained to them. It travels directly into your environment through whatever connection they have to your business.
This is supply chain exposure, and most businesses have far more of it than they realize. Software tools connected to their network. Service providers holding credentials. Contractors whose access was never removed after a project ended. All of it represents a path that most business owners have never mapped out.
CISA has published detailed supply chain risk guidance specifically because this threat vector is one of the most underestimated in the small and mid-sized business space. The problem isn’t just that vendors can be compromised — it’s that most businesses have no visibility into what those vendors can actually touch.
Outsourcing a service doesn’t outsource accountability.
Knowing where you stand means being able to answer three questions:
- Which vendors can access your data or systems?
- What are they connecting to?
- Who is responsible internally for managing those relationships?
If those answers aren’t clear, that gap is your exposure. Our cybersecurity services include vendor risk reviews specifically because this is where we see the most undetected exposure in the businesses we work with.
A Quick Summer Security Checklist
Before the next vacation request hits your inbox, run through these basics:
- Payment verification: Does your team know to call and confirm any financial request that arrives by email, using a number they already have on file?
- Access review: Have you audited which vendors and contractors still have active credentials to your systems?
- Coverage during time off: Is there a clear, security-aware backup for anyone who handles financial approvals or vendor communications?
- Employee awareness: Do your employees know what to do — specifically — when something seems off?
- Monitoring: Is someone actively watching your network for unusual activity, or would a slow-moving intrusion go unnoticed for weeks?
None of these require a big budget or a dedicated security team. They require intention — and doing them before something goes wrong instead of after.
By the Time You See It, It’s Already Moving
Sharks don’t announce themselves — and neither do the cybercriminals targeting your business right now.
The companies that get hit aren’t always the ones that ignored obvious warning signs. They’re the ones who assumed everything was fine because nothing looked wrong.
Summer is when schedules get loose, attention drifts, and the water looks the calmest. It’s also when attackers tend to be most active.
At Southwest Networks, we help businesses get a clear picture of where they’re exposed — across vendors, employee activity, and day-to-day operations — before something goes wrong. If you don’t know where your business stands, that uncertainty is worth addressing now.
Schedule a 10-minute discovery call or call us at 760-770-5200.
FAQ
What is business email compromise (BEC)?
Business email compromise is a type of attack where a cybercriminal impersonates a vendor, supplier, or executive to trick someone at your company into sending money or sensitive information. The emails often look completely legitimate — same name, similar formatting, plausible context. No hacking is required. The attacker just needs one person to act without verifying. The FBI’s IC3 report consistently ranks BEC as the top cybercrime category by total dollar loss.
How do I protect my business from phishing?
The most important protection is a culture where employees feel comfortable pausing before they click. Pair that with a simple, clear process — any unexpected login request, payment instruction, or link in an email gets verified before any action is taken. Multi-factor authentication on all accounts adds a second layer so that even if credentials get stolen, attackers can’t use them easily. Ongoing awareness training keeps these habits sharp rather than letting them fade after a one-time onboarding session.
What is supply chain risk in cybersecurity?
Supply chain risk is the exposure your business inherits through the vendors, contractors, and software tools that have access to your systems or data. If one of those third parties gets compromised, attackers can use that connection to reach your environment. The risk is especially high for credentials that were shared during a project and never revoked, or software tools that were connected to your network and forgotten.
How do I know if a vendor has been compromised?
Most businesses find out too late — either when they notice unusual activity themselves or when the vendor discloses an incident. The more proactive approach is to limit what each vendor can access in the first place, require notification clauses in vendor agreements, and monitor for unusual outbound activity on your network. Knowing which vendors have access to what — and auditing that list regularly — means you can respond faster when something does happen.
What should employees do if they receive a suspicious email?
Don’t click any links. Don’t reply. Don’t call any phone number listed in the email itself. Report it to your IT team or manager using a separate communication channel — a direct message, a phone call, or an in-person conversation. The goal is to slow down and verify through a trusted channel before taking any action. Employees should never feel embarrassed for flagging something that turns out to be harmless. The one time it isn’t harmless is the time that matters.
