For many security leaders, the holiday season is a paradox. Business slows down, offices grow quieter, and teams finally get a chance to unplug. But while defenders are offline, attackers are anything but. Silent nights for your organization often mean busy nights for hackers.

This reality reinforces an uncomfortable truth: in a Zero Trust world, compromise is assumed, and resilience depends on how quickly it is detected and contained. That’s where Network Detection and Response (NDR), combined with IPS-style blocking capabilities, becomes a powerful ally when your team is offline.

Why Attackers Love Holidays and Long Weekends

Attackers are pragmatic. They choose timing that maximizes dwell time and minimizes resistance. Holidays, long weekends, and off-hours offer the perfect conditions:

• Reduced staff and slower response times
  SOC coverage may be thinner, escalation paths slower, and decision-makers harder to reach.
• Change fatigue and exceptions
  Temporary access, relaxed controls, or “just for the holidays” configurations often remain overlooked.
• Lower baseline noise
  With fewer legitimate users active, attackers can blend in more easily and test movements without triggering obvious alerts.

In short, attackers know that a breach discovered on Monday morning may have already been active since Friday night. Their goal isn’t always immediate disruption, it’s persistence.

Accepting the Inevitable: Breach as a Starting Point

Modern security strategy has matured past the illusion of absolute prevention. Even the most advanced SASE architectures, zero trust initiatives, and endpoint controls cannot guarantee that every phishing attempt, stolen credential, or supply chain compromise will be stopped at the door.

What is controllable is time to detection.

The longer an attacker remains undetected, the more damage they can do:

• Mapping your environment
• Escalating privileges
• Moving laterally to critical systems
• Exfiltrating sensitive data

This is why leading security teams now operate under an assumption of breach. From that perspective, the key question becomes: Where is the attacker most visible once inside the network?

The answer is simple: lateral movement.

Why Lateral Movement Becomes Detectable When You Control the Network

access techniques change constantly, phishing kits evolve, exploits rotate, and malware morphs. Lateral movement, however, is constrained by reality. Attackers must interact with your internal network to achieve their objectives.

That interaction leaves traces:

• Unusual authentication patterns
• Unexpected connections between systems
• Abnormal east-west traffic volumes
• Use of administrative protocols outside normal baselines

Unlike perimeter attacks, lateral movement is harder for attackers to fully disguise because it depends on your environment. This makes it a prime detection point and the sweet spot for NDR.

NDR: Always Watching When Your Team Is Not

Network Detection and Response solutions continuously analyze network traffic to establish a behavioral baseline and detect anomalies in real time. The strategic value of NDR lies in three key strengths:

1. Deep Visibility Into East-West Traffic

Traditional security tools often focus on “What enters and leaves the network”: north-south traffic. NDR shines where attackers actually operate post-breach: inside.

By monitoring lateral traffic across data centers, campuses, and cloud environments, NDR can surface:

• Suspicious peer-to-peer communications
• Lateral credential abuse
• Reconnaissance activity that would otherwise go unnoticed

This is particularly valuable in SASE-driven architectures, where hybrid and distributed environments create blind spots for legacy tools.

2. Behavioral Detection Instead of Signature Reliance

During off-hours, relying on known signatures or predefined rules is risky. Attackers frequently use “living off the land” techniques that look legitimate at first glance.

NDR focuses on behavior:

• Why is this user account accessing systems it never touched before?
• Why is this workload suddenly scanning the network?
• Why is an internal server communicating like an endpoint?

These questions are answered automatically, without human intervention—critical when your team is offline.

3. Assume Breach, Buy Time: Why Early Detection Matters

The difference between detecting lateral movement within minutes versus days is enormous. Early detection can mean:

• One compromised endpoint instead of dozens
• No access to crown-jewel systems
• No large-scale data exfiltration

From a business perspective, this directly reduces financial impact, regulatory exposure, and reputational damage.

From Detection to Action: The Power of IPS Integration

Detection alone, especially at 2 a.m. on a public holiday is not enough.

This is where combining NDR with blocking capabilities traditionally associated with IPS becomes a game changer.

When NDR detects malicious lateral movement, integrated IPS controls can:

• Automatically block suspicious connections
• Isolate compromised hosts
• Stop command-and-control traffic in real time

This closes the gap between insight and action. Instead of waiting for a human to validate and respond, the system enforces guardrails immediately and buying precious time until your team is back online.

NDR as a Strategic Layer in SASE Architectures

For SASE buyers, NDR complements existing investments rather than replacing them. While SASE focuses on secure access and policy enforcement, NDR provides:

• Independent verification of what’s actually happening on the network
• Visibility beyond user-to-app flows
• A safety net when identity-based controls fail

Together with IPS-style blocking, NDR strengthens the overall architecture by addressing the reality of post-breach activity, especially lateral movement, where the highest-risk actions occur.

Silent Nights Don’t Have to Mean Blind Spots

Attackers will continue to exploit quiet moments: holidays, weekends, and off-hours. That reality won’t change. What can change is your organization’s ability to detect and stop them before damage is done.

By assuming breach, focusing on lateral movement, and leveraging NDR combined with automated blocking, security leaders can ensure that:

• Attacks are detected quickly
• Threats are contained automatically
• Business risk is minimized, even when the team is offline

Silent nights don’t have to be dangerous. With the right visibility and response in place, your network can stay awake and your people don’t have to.