The Season of Access: Securing Identities Amid the Holiday Rush

As October turns to November, the holiday spirit animates retail windows and supply chains alike. For executives and CISOs, those gleaming displays mark not just the arrival of shoppers, but the start of the year’s biggest test for identity governance maturity. Behind every decorated storefront and bustling distribution center is a backstage drama: hiring, onboarding, and securing thousands of temporary identities, with each being essential for operational success as well as a potential cause for security concern.

However, 2025’s end-of-year rush is distinctive. According to the National Retail Federation, this season could witness the fewest holiday hires in over a decade, with forecasts suggesting just 265,000 to 365,000 temporary new roles added – a sharp drop from 400,000 to 500,000 in past years. While hiring numbers may be down, the cybersecurity stakes have never been higher. As organizations have shifted to an identity-first security perimeter, every access point (whether for seasonal workers, contractors, or systems) represents a potential vulnerability. This makes identity governance and automation crucial for both optimizing security and maximizing operational efficiency. With more complex access landscapes, automated provisioning and deprovisioning processes ensure that identities are granted appropriate access precisely when needed and revoked immediately when employment ends, eliminating the security gaps that manual processes create.

Agility Without Oversight

Winter holidays pose a strategic dilemma – uncertain consumer demand and supply chain complexity. The drive to scale up quickly is matched only by the need to do so safely. The abrupt hiring waves of October, November, and December trigger an avalanche of identity tasks: new accounts, elevated privileges, and accelerated access requests – all of which must be issued, tracked, and revoked precisely.

Leading organizations rely on modern IGA (Identity Governance & Administration) platforms like Omada to meet these demands. These solutions automate and secure the full identity lifecycle from rapid onboarding through time-bound access control and continuous auditability. The executive imperative is clear: agility cannot come at the expense of visibility or oversight.

Risk and Complexity: The Reality of Holiday Hiring

Even as holiday hiring hits historic lows, the complexity of managing seasonal identities has never been higher. The compressed timeframes, elevated privileges, and rapid turnover create a perfect storm for identity management challenges. Consider the following factors that compound this seasonal pressure:

1. Volume and Velocity: Retailers typically add thousands of workers per week during November and December, only to lay off or redeploy many by early January.
2. Supply and Demand: Job postings in retail, logistics, and hospitality dropped 16% this October, but job seeker interest is up 27%, creating a fiercely competitive and highly dynamic environment.
3. System Dependence: With fewer hires handling the same workload, employees are often cross-trained across multiple roles with elevated access. This amplifies the risk of privilege creep and stale credentials as responsibilities frequently shift.
4. Layoffs and Transition: BLS data shows that employment buildups in the final quarter are followed by sharp reductions in January and February, leaving organizations exposed if access revocation does not keep pace.

KuppingerCole highlights that in this environment, manual or ad hoc identity management reliably produces orphaned accounts, compliance shortfalls, and even opportunities for insider risk or data theft. The winter rush is not forgiving.

Automation, Policy, and Zero Trust Recommendations

The key to seasonal resilience is automation and real-time policy enforcement. Rather than relying on manual ticket systems or spreadsheet tracking, leading organizations deploy IGA platforms that respond dynamically to workforce changes. This approach ensures security scales with operational demands through:

1. Automated Lifecycle: Platforms like Omada integrate with HR, payroll, and scheduling tools to provision and deprovision access instantly. New hires receive only the minimum entitlements, and accounts expire as soon as contracts end.
2. Dynamic Policy Enforcement: Entitlements must be adaptive, shifting as employees rotate through different posts, from stocking shelves on Black Friday to operating registers in late December.
3. Least Privilege Principle: Every temporary worker must be restricted to their operational needs (e.g., no “just-in-case” access or lingering credentials beyond necessity).
4. Zero Trust Alignment: Continuous authentication, context-aware access requests, and multifactor verification should be deployed for all logins and sensitive system transitions. This is especially critical as staff switch shifts or locations rapidly.

Seven Practical Steps for Holiday Governance

What does best-in-class look like in action? Organizations that successfully navigate seasonal surges share common governance practices that balance speed with security. These seven strategies provide a practical framework for transforming seasonal hiring from a compliance risk into a controlled, repeatable process:

1. Rapid Onboarding: Use IGA-driven workflows to generate accounts and entitlements at the point of hire, for example. No waiting for manual updates or IT tickets.
2. Automatic Expiry: Set every seasonal login to terminate at contract’s end, with exceptions routed through secure, auditable approval flows.
3. Continuous Cleanup: Schedule weekly reviews for stale, abandoned, or duplicate accounts using automated reporting, especially vital as holiday rosters shrink in January.
4. Role-Based Entitlements: Align permissions exactly to job function, updating policies as seasonal roles evolve through peak shopping days, holiday events, and end-of-year inventory.
5. Zero Trust Monitoring: Deploy adaptive authentication and behavioral analytics, focusing on anomalous access (e.g., elevated privileges, late-night logins, or out-of-pattern usage).
6. Compliance and Audit: Launch attestation campaigns ensuring managers and IT verify all access at least monthly and after mass offboarding; retain audit logs for every hire and departure.
7. Resilience for Next Year: Treat each season as a stress test. Use metrics on onboarding errors, access removals, and privileged account incidents as data to refine policy.

Holiday Cycles and Strategic Shifts

2025’s retail and hospitality sectors are adjusting as fewer workers are hired, but those hired are tasked with more responsibility, cross-training, and exposure to business-critical systems. Logistics, distribution centers, and supply chain roles are similarly concentrated, leveraging more automation but placing additional digital trust in the hands of seasonal hires.

Technology means fewer boots on the ground but more reliance on temporary staff for systems access. Organizations leveraging automation for flexible scheduling and year-round staffing models must strengthen their identity governance controls to avoid gaps in seasonal offboarding.

Year-End Reckoning: The Midnight Countdown

As the last registers close on January 5, true governance is revealed: only organizations that offboard every temporary worker, revoke permissions immediately, and attest to clean, complete access logs can claim operational maturity. KuppingerCole stresses that the quality of seasonal offboarding separates resilient brands from exposed ones, especially as regulators and boards demand evidence of identity control.

Modern IGA solutions facilitate “attestation campaigns” at the end of the peak, verifying every remaining account and removing dormant, low-risk entitlements. This process delivers not only a safe transition to business-as-usual, but also the insight needed to improve next year’s preparations.

Turning Holiday Pressure into Strategic Strength

End-of-year hiring is both a challenge and a proof point for modern organizations. Automation, least privilege, dynamic policies, and Zero Trust principles must all show converge, especially during the holiday rush.

By adopting the right governance technologies and best practices, companies transform a high-stakes season from a scramble to a showcase by protecting customer trust, maintaining compliance, and setting the standard for operational agility as lights dim, audits close, and a new year begins.

This holiday, give your organization the gift of trust, resilience, and clear insight where every identity is managed as if the stakes are highest, because they are. Contact Omada to learn more about automatic provisioning and deprovisioning – your holiday express train for identity management.