FTC Sues Wyndham Hotels Over Data Security Failures - Security - Privacy - Informationweek - 0 views
-
The Federal Trade Commission Tuesday announced that it had filed a suit against global hospitality company Wyndham Worldwide Corporation, as well as three of its subsidiaries
-
failing to institute a robust information security program, even in the wake of a major exploit.
-
exposure of over 600,000 credit card accounts and $10.6 million in fraudulent credit card charges, the FTC alleged.
- ...5 more annotations...
-
This article describes one of the worst situations that could occur when operating a hotel. According to the text, Wyndham Hotel Group failed to implement a strong enough security system, resulting in hackers breaching the network and stealing over 600,000 credit card numbers and over 10 million dollars in fraudulent charges. The FTC is suing Wyndham Corporation for failing to take the proper security measures to guarantee the security of the most important customer information. The FTC also states that Wyndham used improper software configurations that presented credit card information in a manner that was clear and easy to read. Michael Valentino, spokesman for Wyndham Worldwide, the company made prompt efforts to notify those whose information had been compromised and according to Valentino, no hotel customer had experienced a financial loss as a result of the attacks. Despite Valentino's claims, the FTC is suing Wyndham for unfair and deceptive practices in failing to protect the privacy and personally identifiable information about guests. The FTC claims that Wyndham failed to address the security failures that occurred after the first breach in 2008 and did not implement technology that could have detected unauthorized access to networks. In 2009, hackers used similar techniques to break into the network again as steal as much personal information as they could.