Go-live actions: activate the seasonal filter calibration, pin the monitoring dashboard (orders, flag rate, decline rate — the card-testing tripwire), post the escalation runbooks where the team works, switch checkout messaging to the holiday cutoff calendar, and start the daily 15-minute risk standup that runs through mid-December. From here, discipline beats cleverness: execute the plan, resist mid-event edits, log everything for the post-season review.
The switches
- Seasonal calibration live: the reweighted rules activate now — gift-pattern relaxations, peak-threat tightenings, then hands off.
- Monitoring pinned: one dashboard, three lines — order volume, flag rate, checkout decline rate. Decline-rate spikes are the card-testing early warning; flag-rate drift signals calibration issues while they're small.
- Runbooks posted: the card-testing response, the oversell protocol, the chargeback-threat script — findable by whoever's on shift, not filed in a doc nobody opens under pressure.
- Holiday messaging live: cutoff calendar copy active, switch-owner confirmed for each date.
- Automation verified: dashboard green, sources synced, alerts flowing.
The daily rhythm
Fifteen minutes, same time daily through mid-December: yesterday's decline rate (testing tripwire), flag queue depth vs capacity, any dispute/alert arrivals, any runbook activations. Small drifts caught daily stay small.
And log decisions as you go — the November choices you'll want to review in the post-season retro evaporate if unrecorded. The stores that get structurally better at Q4 are the ones that can reconstruct what happened.
That's the season. Prep's done — from here, Aurai watches the orders and fights the disputes; you sell. Good luck out there.
Frequently asked questions
What's the single most important metric during cyber week?
Checkout decline rate — it's the earliest tripwire for card-testing attacks and payment issues alike, moving hours before anything else shows.
Should I adjust fraud rules during the event?
Only via the posted runbooks (e.g., card-testing response). Discretionary mid-event edits under pressure are how calibrated systems become uncalibrated ones.
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