Seasonal Workers: Securing Temporary Identities Created at Speed

Seasonal hiring for many organizations means creating large numbers of workforce identities in a short space of time. New starters need immediate access to systems and data, often before IT has had an opportunity to get to know them.

That pressure can introduce gaps in the onboarding process, not because IT teams don’t care about security, but because the business needs people ready to work. The usual onboarding process can struggle when dealing with seasonal volume.

The challenge is activating temporary workforce identities quickly without reducing the level of assurance behind them. Organizations should treat seasonal workforce identities exactly like permanent employee identities and automate verification rather than weakening controls to meet hiring deadlines.

Seasonal hiring pressure exposes identity weaknesses

Seasonal onboarding compresses a process that normally takes days or weeks into a much shorter window. HR and service desk teams may need to create, verify and activate hundreds or thousands of accounts, and the organization cannot wait weeks for each worker to complete a conventional onboarding process.

That creates several challenges:

• Volume makes consistency difficult: Manual identity checks are manageable when an organization hires a small number of employees each week. It becomes harder to apply consistently when large groups start within days of one another. Workarounds introduce opportunities for information to be entered incorrectly, sent to the wrong person or approved without the expected level of scrutiny.
• Short timelines encourage insecure handoffs: Seasonal workers may be hired only days before they start, leaving little time to resolve identity issues or arrange secure access. Initial passwords can end up passing through managers or staffing agencies, often by email or SMS. Under hiring pressure, getting credentials to the worker can take priority over confirming they reached the right person.
• A short account lifespan doesn’t lower risk: Temporary accounts may exist for only a few weeks or months, but they can still provide access to valuable systems and data. For instance, a seasonal retail worker might access customer records and payment systems. Attackers can exploit this; they only need enough access and time to establish a foothold or target other users.

Stronger identity checks do not have to slow hiring

Security controls are often treated as a source of friction during seasonal onboarding.  And when onboarding teams are under pressure, cracks can appear in otherwise robust processes. Accounts may be created before identity evidence has been fully checked, or access may be approved with limited context simply to keep operations moving.

In practice, weak processes create their own delays. New hires may lose starter passwords, receive credentials late, or contact the service desk because setup instructions were unclear. Agents then spend time correcting access problems and recovering accounts.

Threat actors have become highly proficient at targeting the service desk, and a single fraudulent request can cause widespread disruption. The 2025 M&S breach showed the potential impact: attackers reportedly used social engineering to compromise an account and escalate privileges, before deploying ransomware that disrupted online sales and wider operations for several weeks. M&S later estimated that the incident would reduce annual profit by around £300 million.

The better approach is to build identity security into the onboarding process from the start. This allows organizations to move at the necessary speed during busy periods while applying the same standard to every new hire.

Identity verification should come first because every other control depends on it

The answer is not to add more manual checks to an already overloaded process. Teams should instead make the right controls part of the activation workflow, so every seasonal identity follows the same rules regardless of hiring volume.

Identity verification is the control that protects everything else

Before enforcing multifactor authentication (MFA), assigning permissions, or issuing credentials, organizations need confidence that the person receiving access is who they claim to be. If that decision is wrong, stronger passwords and tighter access controls simply protect the wrong account. For seasonal hiring, identity verification should therefore be the first control built into the activation process rather than an additional check performed later.

Strong credentials prevent temporary accounts becoming easy targets

A short employment period should not mean weaker account security. Enforce strong passwords and multi-factor authentication for every worker, including seasonal hires. Applying the same baseline controls across the workforce reduces inconsistencies and makes temporary accounts harder to take over.

Role-based access limits the impact of mistakes

Seasonal workers should receive only the permissions required for their role and assignment. NIST recommends authorizing access only when it is necessary for assigned tasks, reviewing privileges regularly, and removing access when it is no longer needed. For short-term workers, those principles are best applied through predefined roles and automatic expiration dates.

Identity verification is only the start of secure onboarding

Securing temporary worker identities starts with the onboarding process. A new hire may pass an identity check and still receive a password through an insecure channel, which increases the risk of interception. A securely activated account may later be compromised through a fraudulent service desk request.

Specops Secure Onboarding mitigates the risks inherent in the onboarding process, protecting the journey across three key areas: before the employee starts, when they verify their identity and whenever they need help.

New hires should create credentials before they arrive

Specops Secure Onboarding lets new hires create their own secure Active Directory password through a secure enrollment link.

IT never creates or shares the credential. This removes the interception risk that comes with sending passwords by email or SMS, while helping new starters arrive ready to access the systems they need.

First-day verification must prove the person is present

Specops Secure Onboarding adds government-issued ID scanning and AI-driven biometric liveness detection to the onboarding flow.

The process checks that the document is genuine and confirms that the person presenting it is physically present. With support for more than 16,000 document types across 254 countries, organizations can apply the same verification standard across a large and geographically diverse seasonal workforce.

Service desk help should require identity proof first

The onboarding risk does not end once an account is active. New hires are more likely to contact the service desk about forgotten passwords, locked accounts or missing access.

Specops Secure Onboarding blocks agents from taking sensitive actions until the caller’s identity has been verified. Through native integrations with ServiceNow, Jira and other leading ITSM platforms, verification becomes part of the agent’s existing workflow rather than an additional manual step.

Don’t let the hiring process expand your attack surface

Seasonal hiring puts identity processes under pressure, but speed doesn’t have to come at the expense of security. By securing key moments throughout the onboarding process, organizations can onboard temporary staff quickly without creating avoidable gaps.

Specops can help you build an identity security strategy that supports fast, secure onboarding across the full workforce lifecycle. Contact us today to discuss your current processes and where stronger controls could make the biggest difference.