Is Hospitality Industry Information Secured?

Hotels have fallen victim to numerous cybercrimes and physical thefts. It is certainly a piece of bad news for most of the hotels. Every tourist hopes for the best services and post-services benefits. But an event of intrusion devastates the reputation of tourists and hotels.

Recent incidents of breaches affected some of the splendid names in the industry.

Tourist data/identity theft

The data managers in the hotel industry are responsible for collecting and protecting the information of the visiting customers. Unfortunately, many hackers have raised their levels. They have become more sophisticated in using malware to steal information from the payment systems of hotels. Many Similar attacks have been reported from hotels around the world. The big names such as Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Millennium hotels and resorts, HEI Hospitality, Hilton, and many more have been affected.

In the year 2017, the largest hotel chains in the world were attacked for three months continuously. All the payment specific information was gathered by it along with cardholder names, their expiration dates, verification codes, card numbers, and other critical information. The hackers accessed credit card information from over a thousand hotels. The malware was installed on servers that processed payment information, the key weapon used by hackers.

Another incident of data breach reported in 2017 was about the involvement of a third-party hotel reservation system that enabled unauthorized access to the network of the system of 14 properties. It was similar to the previous incident where the payment card details such as- account numbers, card security codes, expiration dates, and more were accessed. The data was unsecured, not encrypted, and was available for several months. It allowed the perpetrators to steal as much as they could.

In 2017, a Ransomware attack was reported in an Austrian hotel. This cyber-attack was made on the door-locking mechanisms of the Austrian hotel that demanded $1600 bitcoins as a ransom. Finally, the hotel agreed to pay the ransom and get back to normalcy. It was the third attack in a row for that hotel. It severely affected the reputation of the hotel along with monetary losses. They regained control but after falling victims to attacks.

A chain of hotels with over 4900 properties in more than a hundred countries suffered a major data breach in 2015. The payment card details of more than 3,60,000 customers were exposed. The hotel chain had failed to maintain data security, and it also failed to comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. The hotel management did not notify the victims about the breaches either. They waited for almost a year to issue the first breach notification.

Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE have been the victims of a data breach in the hospitality business. The latest breach was witnessed in Dubai based ride-hailing platform Careem and the other in an airline company. The data of 14 million Careem customers were stolen such as their names, email addresses, trip details, phone numbers, and more.

Globally, 56% of data breaches are through social media platforms, but in the UAE, it is more through the app-based platforms.