Numerous articles warm of security dangers duing this intense period of e-commerce and credit card activity

http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities—threats/cyber-monday-what-retailers-and-shoppers-should-watch-for/d/d-id/132330

http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities—threats/black-friday-security-brick-and-mortar-retailers-have-cyber-threats-too/d/d-id/1323235

https://r-cisc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/R-CISC-2015-Hacking-Season-.pdf

Cyber Monday: What Retailers & Shoppers Should Watch For –Attackers have a variety of ways to commit fraud and may take advantage of busy time to sneak in a data breach. While store managers and salespeople gear up for long lines, social engineering, and point-of-sale malware on Black Friday, CIOs and development teams gear up for fraudulent online purchases and Web-based data breaches on Cyber Monday.

The most immediate concern is anything that prevents a retailer from making money, like a denial of service attack on an online shop or mobile purchasing app — or a security measure that causes impatient customers to take their business elsewhere. Threats that may cost a retailer money — like shipping fraud or chargebacks for fradulent purchases made with stolen credit cards or gift cards bought with stolen credit card data — are secondary. Data breaches of customer payment card records or other information fall to the bottom of the priority list.  As the Retail Cyber-Intelligence Sharing Center (R-CISC) explained in advice to members about holiday “hacking season”: “Downtime is expensive, but especially so at this time of year. Retail staff is motivated and focused on sales, at the risk of possibly allowing fraudulent transactions or other types of breaches.”