Black Friday 2026 lands on November 27, and your team will be shopping, tracking packages, and chasing deals between meetings. Attackers know it, and they build their best fake emails for exactly this week. If your business in Georgetown, Round Rock, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, or Austin has not talked about holiday security yet, now is the time.
Quick Answer: Black Friday 2026 is November 27, and phishing aimed at shoppers and businesses surges every year around it. Protect your business by requiring multifactor authentication, filtering email, training employees to verify payment and gift card requests by phone, and having a local team that answers fast when someone clicks the wrong link.
Key Takeaways
- Phishing tied to Black Friday jumped 620% in the weeks leading up to the 2025 holiday weekend, according to email security researchers.
- Business email compromise cost victims about $3.05 billion in 2025, and holiday chaos makes fake invoices easier to slip through.
- Employees shopping on work computers and phones is the most common way a personal click becomes a business problem.
- A simple rule works: no payment, gift card, or bank detail change gets approved by email alone. Pick up the phone.
- Speed matters. The sooner your IT team hears about a bad click, the smaller the damage.
What's at Stake for Your Business This Holiday Season
Here is the number that got my attention. Darktrace, an email security company, tracked more than 6,500 customers from October 1 to November 21, 2025, and reported that phishing attacks taking advantage of Black Friday jumped 620% in the weeks leading up to the holiday weekend. They also expected another 20 to 30% rise during Black Friday week itself.
Those emails did not just pretend to be a retailer. They imitated package delivery alerts, order confirmations, account warnings, and the big brands your employees already use. That is why a business owner cannot treat this as a consumer problem.
The bigger picture is just as sobering. The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center reported nearly $20.9 billion in losses for 2025, up 26% from 2024, with more than 1 million complaints. Business email compromise alone accounted for almost $3.05 billion of that, and phishing was the most commonly reported type of cybercrime.
Credentials are the prize. In the 2026 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, credentials were part of the compromised data in 31% of breaches at small and medium sized businesses. One employee who types a password into a fake login page can hand over the keys.
Why Central Texas Businesses Face This Challenge
Our corridor has grown fast. Businesses in Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Round Rock, and Georgetown have added people and cloud tools quickly, and many still run on habits formed when they were ten employees in one room. Healthcare practices, construction firms, law offices, accounting firms, and defense contractors all hold data worth stealing.
The holidays add three pressure points at once:
- Distracted people. Employees shop and track packages during the workday, often on the same laptop and phone they use for company email.
- Thin coverage. Owners and managers take time off, approvals slow down, and the person who would normally say "that looks wrong" is not in the building.
- Year end money movement. Vendors send final invoices, payroll changes happen, and bonuses and gift cards go out. Fake requests blend right in.
Attackers do not need to be clever. They need your team to be busy.
How CTTS Helps Protect Your Business on Black Friday
I have led CTTS for 24 years, and our promise has not changed: a local team that knows your name, answers in three rings, and treats your risk like our own. Complete Care Coverage builds protection in before the holiday rush, so your people are not your only defense.
- Email filtering and link protection that catches fake delivery notices and lookalike login pages before they reach an inbox.
- Multifactor authentication on every account that matters, so a stolen password alone is not enough.
- Security awareness training that teaches your team to spot holiday scams in plain language, with short refreshers instead of a once a year lecture.
- Continuous monitoring for suspicious sign ins, so a login from a strange place gets noticed right away.
- A local team that answers. When someone says "I think I clicked something," they reach a person fast, and that person walks them through what to do.
Black Friday Security Best Practices for Employees and Owners
What are the biggest Black Friday scams aimed at businesses?
The biggest Black Friday scams aimed at businesses are fake delivery and order alerts, lookalike login pages, spoofed vendor invoices, and urgent requests from "the boss" to buy gift cards. Each one tries to get a person to act before they think. A delivery notice asks for a login. An invoice arrives with new bank details. A text claims to be from an executive who is "stuck in a meeting" and needs gift cards right now.
Share these examples with your team this week. People catch what they have already seen.
Should employees shop on work computers during Black Friday?
Employees should not shop on work computers or phones that hold company email, because a single bad click puts company data in play. Most people will shop anyway, so the better answer is to make it safe. Use a written policy that sets expectations, separate work and personal browser profiles, and web filtering that blocks known scam sites. Tell your team plainly that you are not trying to police their shopping. You are protecting their jobs and your customers.
How do I stop fake invoices and gift card requests?
You stop fake invoices and gift card requests with one rule: no payment, gift card, or bank detail change is approved by email alone. Anyone who receives a request to change where money goes calls the vendor or executive at a phone number already on file, never one printed in the email. This single habit defeats most business email compromise attempts. Put it in writing, tell your accounting team, and tell your executives that they will be asked to verify, and that you want them to be.
What should an employee do right after clicking a bad link?
An employee who clicks a bad link should stop, disconnect nothing on their own, and call IT immediately. Do not delete the email, do not try to fix it, and do not wait to see what happens. Speed is what limits the damage. Make sure everyone knows the number to call and that nobody gets in trouble for reporting a mistake. The employees who hide a click are the ones who cost you the most.
Is your holiday coverage plan ready?
Your holiday coverage plan is ready only if someone with authority is reachable during the long weekend and your IT team knows how to reach them. Decide before Thanksgiving who can approve an emergency, who handles a suspected breach, and where the after hours number is posted. A plan that lives in someone's head does not work at 9 p.m. on a Friday.
A Simple Checklist to Finish Before Thanksgiving
- Confirm multifactor authentication is on for email, banking, payroll, and cloud accounts.
- Send your team a short note with the three scams above and the number to call.
- Write down the phone callback rule for payments and bank changes.
- Check that your email filtering and endpoint protection are active and current.
- Post your after hours IT contact where everyone can find it.
If you cannot check every box today, you are not alone. Most businesses we talk to in Round Rock and Georgetown find two or three gaps. The goal is not perfection by November 27. It is fewer open doors than last year.
Take the Next Step
You should not have to guess whether your business is ready. In a free strategy session we will walk through your email, your accounts, and your holiday plan, and hand you a clear list of what to fix first. No pressure and no jargon.
Schedule a free strategy session with CTTS.
Have Questions? We've Got Answers
When is Black Friday in 2026?
Black Friday 2026 is Friday, November 27, the day after Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday follows on November 30. Phishing campaigns usually ramp up weeks before, so the risk to your business starts well before the holiday weekend.
Does my small business really need to worry about Black Friday scams?
Yes. Attackers target businesses of every size because small and mid sized companies often have fewer controls and busier staff during the holidays. Credentials were part of the compromised data in 31% of breaches at small and medium sized businesses, according to the 2026 Verizon report, so one stolen password can matter a lot.
What is the fastest way to reduce our risk before November 27?
Turn on multi factor authentication everywhere, adopt the phone callback rule for payments, and brief your team on fake delivery notices and gift card requests. Those three steps cost little and close the most common holiday doors. CTTS can help you confirm all three quickly.
Contact CTTS today for IT support and managed services in Austin, TX. Let us handle your IT so you can focus on growing your business. Visit CTTSonline.com or call us at (512) 388-5559 to get started!