Hotels in hackers' sights as technology replaces personal touch | Financial Times - 1 views
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Hotels and hospitality businesses are now the third most targeted by cyber attackers of all industry sectors.
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Hackers see international hotel chains, which process a huge volume of transactions, as easy pickings
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he increased use of technology to replace face-to-face services such as check-in and on-site payments has only raised this risk.
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One of the most high-profile cyber incidents in recent times was the breach of Starwood’s database in 2014, before the group was bought by Marriott, the world’s largest hotel chain. That hack, which was only discovered after the deal, exposed the data of about half a billion customers, Marriott said, when it revealed the impact in 2018.
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The company sped up planned investment into data security and improved technology, such as software that detects suspicious cyber behaviour in real time, Van der Walt adds.
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As cloud computing services have expanded, hotels have pushed more data storage towards external holders such as Amazon Web Services or Oracle
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Many hoteliers additionally employ third-party agencies to manage credit card details and keep different forms of data separate:
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And with guests demanding an increasingly personalised and individually-tailored service, particularly from the well-known hotel brands, data is likely to remain a precious commodity in need of protection.
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This article explains how and why hotels went from being in the bottom 13% to the top 3 most targeted industry for cyber attacks. It talks about how the implementation of technology to handle customer date has made the industry vulnerable and also how corporations are battling the issue by using separate third party companies to store data and handle credit card information.