Safeguarding Operations Ahead of the Holiday Fraud Surge: How Retailers Can Stay Ahead

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are not only the year’s busiest shopping days, they operate as live stress tests for retailers’ fraud prevention strategies. Last year’s data show exactly how holiday fraud rates surged, with fraudulent transactions jumping nearly fivefold on Black Friday and quadrupling on Cyber Monday, signaling an apparent uptick in risk for merchants during peak periods.

Today’s fraudsters leverage automation, spoofed devices and synthetic identities to bypass traditional defenses and static controls. These evolving tactics put merchants and customers at increased risk during busy shopping periods. To stay ahead, retailers must focus on one core objective: stop fraud before it affects customer experience or revenue. This requires a proactive plan to detect and counter coordinated attacks throughout the holiday season.

How Fraudsters Are Industrializing Attacks to Exploit Peak Season Demand

Last year, bot-driven attacks increased by 407 percent during the week of Black Friday and remained consistently high, peaking again at over 500 percent during the Christmas period. Attackers frequently target login and checkout points, utilizing credential stuffing and automated card testing with stolen data. Device anomalies nearly tripled, while fraudsters adopted real browsers, clean residential IP addresses and created new email accounts — rising by 35 percent in peak weeks and doubling over the holiday.

These behaviors signal a surge in synthetic identities and promotional abuse, as attackers blend in with legitimate shoppers. The use of VPNs and suspicious browsers declined, signaling a shift to tactics specifically designed to evade traditional controls. With these patterns, analyzing anomaly signals across devices, email and behavior is more critical than ever. Merchants relying on outdated controls risk missing attacks until costly losses have already occurred.

How Businesses Can Protect Themselves and Customers From Fraudsters

Fraud attacks begin ramping up in early November and continue through the holiday season. Retailers that approach fraud defense as a continuous campaign are better equipped to protect revenue and maintain customer satisfaction. The following proven strategies help businesses remain resilient and responsive through peak season and beyond:

• Start early by tuning detection rules and machine learning models to catch emerging fraud tactics. Monitoring new email creation rates and device anomalies highlights coordinated attacks.
• Layering device, email, IP and behavioral signals gives a comprehensive, real-time risk perspective and helps uncover fraud rings through returning device or account analysis.
• Automating decisioning and case reviews enables fraud teams to maintain manageable manual review queues and focus their efforts where they have the most significant impact.
• Deploying dynamic friction activates additional verification only at higher risk thresholds, using flexible methods such as SMS or email codes to maintain a smooth customer journey.
• Tracking and blocking repeat offenders with shared blocklists and velocity rules captures rapid repeat attempts from risky devices, IPs and email addresses.

Fraudsters are moving faster than ever. However, with the right strategy, retailers can evolve more quickly, protect revenue, build customer trust, and unlock growth during the busiest shopping season of the year and beyond.

Creating Holiday Resilience

The holiday fraud landscape is growing faster, more coordinated and increasingly sophisticated, with fraudsters using technologies to bypass knowledge gaps.

Retailers today must stay vigilant and agile, treating fraud prevention as a continuous campaign to reduce risk, strengthen trust, and position themselves for growth at the moments that matter most. With that line of thinking, holiday surges can become opportunities to excel, not just survive.

Matt DeLauro is the president, GTM at SEON, a global fraud prevention solution.