So for small to medium sized businesses that don't have the luxury of an onsite system administrator or 24x7 technical support, how can systems be locked down while the troops are away celebrating seasonal cheer? Malware attacks are not necessarily more prevalent on unmanned data centers or SMB servers, but the 'unknown' factor is certainly higher. So how can we achieve peace of mind?

AVG's tips for locking down your IT stack into a safe holding pattern (whether large or small) over any holiday period are as follows:

• Chose to install a 'business edition' security suite that has the appropriate level of awareness to take the necessary action to protect your network automatically whenever it finds a problem - day or night.

• Form IT 'policies' that necessitate a review of the network security log after any period of employee inactivity (even weekends) as this can provide valuable information about preventive measures that will help improve security.

• Make sure employees' laptops that will access the network over holiday periods are installed with the highest level of security software - and make sure that it's up to date!

• Select a network security product that will update itself automatically to protect against new and unknown viruses that constantly appear.