Fortinet issues a cyber-hygiene guide oriented toward the high-consumption El Buen Fin event in Mexico. This initiative directly responds to the notable increase in cyberattacker activity, as malicious actors seek to exploit the high volume of transactions.
The company emphasizes prevention as a fundamental axis for asset and data protection. “At Fortinet, we firmly believe that prevention is the most powerful tool,” says Sebastián Russo, Director of Engineering, Fortinet Mexico. Russo notes that integrating cybersecurity into purchasing habits is essential to ensure that transactions benefit the consumer and do not become vectors for fraud.
The 2024 Buen Fin serves as a critical precedent. During that period, cyberattack attempts were estimated to increase by 300%. Malicious actors were projected to capture 4% of all e-commerce sales, representing an estimated MX$6.8 billion (US$371 million) in illicit revenue from a total of MX$165 billion (US$9 billion) in online sales.
“Cybercriminals could obtain, during El Buen Fin alone, economic benefits exceeding MX$6.8 billion, 11% more than the benefits they were estimated to have obtained during the last edition,” says Rafael Chávez Monroy, Country Manager, F5 Mexico.
According to Manuel Moreno, Director of Information Security, IQSEC, this vulnerability is linked to underinvestment. Companies in Mexico reportedly allocate only 5% to 8% of their technology budgets in cybersecurity measures, but experts suggest that this investment should raise up to 20% in order to cover aspects such as data protection, employee training, real-time monitoring infrastructure, and incident response plans.
Intelligence reports from FortiGuard Labs, Fortinet’s threat analysis and intelligence laboratory, indicate that during the first half of 2025, Mexico registered 40.6 billion cyberattack attempts. This figure positions Mexico second in the region for detected threat volume.
El Buen Fin, as a period of high commercial activity, exacerbates these risks. Attackers intensify operations during these peaks, leveraging factors such as consumer haste and urgency. These conditions, says Russo, make individuals more likely to input sensitive data on insecure platforms or fall victim to social engineering tactics.
Reports highlight attackers’ use of AI to scale operations, creating fraudulent emails and text messages that impersonate recognized stores or logistics services. This trend is supported by data from Sumsub, an identity verification firm, which shows that digital fraud in Mexico rose 27% in the first quarter of 2025 alone. The most alarming trend identified is the use of synthetic identity documents, which jumped 1,200% in Mexico during the same period, far exceeding the global average of 195%.
This heightened risk coincides with high consumer activity. The Mexican Association of Online Sales (AMVO) reports that nearly eight in 10 Mexican internet users plan to shop during El Buen Fin. Sumsub data further indicates that organized attacks are increasingly targeting traditional banking (up 149%) and e-commerce (up 106%). This vulnerability is often exacerbated when platforms relax security controls during peak shopping periods to boost conversions, creating openings for fraudsters. With deepfake fraud surging 1,100% in North America, Miguel Gonzále, Business Development Manager Latin America, Sumsub, says that advanced biometric verification systems capable of detecting real biological signals are key to combating these AI-driven scams.
Fortinet Cyber-Hygiene Guide
Fortinet’s guide details a set of vulnerabilities that B2B organizations — particularly in the retail, e-commerce, and finance sectors — must actively manage to protect their customers and infrastructure. The recommendations expose critical attack vectors:
Web Integrity and Encryption (SSL/TLS): Fortinet advises verifying the address bar for the closed padlock icon, which indicates an encrypted connection, and checking for domain misspellings (for example, “Amazzon” instead of “Amazon”). For companies, this underscores the requirement to maintain valid SSL/TLS certificates for data-in-transit encryption.
Secure Payment Gateway Management: The recommendation is to use payment methods that do not require direct entry of credit or debit card data, such as PayPal or virtual cards offered by banks and fintechs.
The guide says that e-commerce platforms must integrate recognized and secure payment gateways. Offering options like virtual cards or digital wallets reduces the attack surface, minimizes the risk of payment data compromise (PCI-DSS), and transfers risk management to specialized platforms.
Account Takeover (ATO) Mitigation: The guide promotes the activation of two-factor authentication (2FA) and the use of unique, complex passwords. It explicitly warns against password reuse, which facilitates credential stuffing attacks.
ATO is a direct risk to customer accounts on corporate platforms. Companies must implement 2FA/MFA as an essential security layer. The warning about weak passwords compels businesses to enforce password complexity policies and deploy ATO detection solutions that identify credential stuffing attempts.
Unsecured Network Risks (Public Wi-Fi): Lastly, the guide advises against conducting financial transactions or entering passwords while connected to public Wi-Fi networks, such as those in malls or cafes, due to data interception risks.
Attackers on public networks can execute Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. For businesses, this reinforces the need to implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) on their web servers. HSTS forces browsers to communicate only via encrypted connections, protecting user sessions even on hostile networks.
Fortinet says that the key to enjoying these seasons lies in cyber hygiene. “Adopting measures such as those mentioned above is the best investment of time that a consumer can make, and in this way, each buyer becomes an agent of defence, protecting people’s individual assets and strengthening confidence in digital commerce in Mexico,” reads the guide.
