Unwrapping Retail Peak Season Cyber Threats
Palo Alto Networks, Wednesday, October 28th, 2026
Unit 42 reviews cyber threats facing retailers in the 2026 peak shopping season, including past holiday incidents and autonomous attacks.
The post notes that 2025 holiday sales were huge, with Salesforce reporting $1.3 trillion in global online sales, $262 billion of it influenced by AI and agents, which makes the season attractive to criminals.
It recalls incidents disclosed late in prior peak seasons, such as SolarWinds in December 2020 and Log4j in December 2021, which hit during code freezes when teams could not easily make changes.
It then examines threats from both enterprise and guest viewpoints and the trend of autonomous attacks that could affect retailers.