The pandemic created new cybersecurity threats for hotels<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Hotels collect tons of sensitive information: financial records, credit card details, personally identifiable information (PII) of employees and guests. That\u2019s why this industry has historically attracted hackers. After several massive and expensive data breaches affecting Marriott<\/a>, Ritz<\/a>, and Hyatt<\/a>, hotels all over the world realized they must pay close attention to their cybersecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The COVID-19 pandemic spurred a new spike of security attacks on hotels. Malicious actors tried to leverage the confusion in the industry and emerging security vulnerabilities to obtain more sensitive data. As hackers explore new ways to abuse hotel cybersecurity, you need to keep an eye on emerging risks and have a plan to mitigate their consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are the key cybersecurity challenges hospitality organizations have been forced to deal with due to the pandemic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The combination of old and new cybersecurity threats makes the hotel industry extremely vulnerable to attacks from both outside and inside. Organizations that can\u2019t adapt to the changes fast enough put their guests\u2019 data at risk. Let\u2019s take a look at several examples of hotel data breaches in 2021 and see what valuable insights they can give us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5 Industries Most at Risk of Data Breaches<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n There were many cybersecurity incidents in 2021. During the first nine months of 2021, US companies experienced more data breaches<\/a> than during all of 2020. A lot of these breaches happened to hotels. Here are some of the most notable hotel security incidents and possible ways to prevent similar issues in your organization:<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Centara Hotels & Resorts<\/strong> were hacked twice<\/a> by the same group during October 2021. The Desorden hacking group gained access to the hotel\u2019s sensitive data and demanded a $900,000 ransom. Centara Hotels & Resorts claimed they patched the vulnerability that allowed access and refused to pay. Within 10 minutes of this claim, hackers breached the hotel network again and exfiltrated 400 GB of personal guest records and the hotel\u2019s corporate information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lesson learned<\/em>: Rushing the risk assessment and vulnerability patching can lead to much more severe risks and losses than the security incident itself. Take time to make sure your organization has fully recovered from a data breach before making public statements about it. If you feel that your team lacks expertise, don\u2019t hesitate to hire an outside consultant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n RedDoorz<\/strong>, a large booking service that works with hotels all over Asia, experienced a leak of 5.9 million records<\/a>. Hackers discovered the AWS access key to the company\u2019s database by digging through the RedDoorz application for Android, which was developed by a third party. Stolen records include users\u2019 personal data like email, birth date, contact formation, and booking details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lesson learned<\/em>: Review the activities of your contractors and make sure that they follow cybersecurity best practices. Also, make sure that credentials for your internal services and infrastructure are stored securely and can\u2019t be accessed by an unauthorized user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7 Third-Party Security Risk Management Best Practices<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fairfield Inn<\/strong>, a franchise owned by Marriott International, suffered an insider attack on its Shawnee hotel. In December 2021, the Fairfield Inn manager discovered that a hotel employee had stolen logs<\/a> of guests\u2019 personal information. During a police investigation, officers discovered that Lindsay Haley stole sensitive documentation from five different businesses and intended to sell it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lesson learned:<\/em> While most of your employees deserve to be trusted, you have to keep your guard up in case some of them decide to go rogue. Make sure that you monitor employee computer activity<\/a> and access to sensitive data and critical systems in order to quickly detect and stop a malicious actor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Insider Data Theft: Definition, Common Scenarios, and Prevention Tips<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n To withstand new security threats and challenges, you need to make sure that your organization\u2019s cybersecurity system can deter, detect, and disrupt the risks and threats we discussed above. Your organization probably already has a lot of security controls. Reviewing your security system will help you analyze your strengths and weaknesses and get ideas on security improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s take a look at eight possible improvements and see which of them you can implement with Syteca:<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Conducting a cybersecurity risk assessment<\/a> is the first step towards building a solid data protection system. The assessment helps you discover new threat sources and events, security vulnerabilities, and their impact on your organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When searching for potential vulnerabilities and risks, take into account not only the history of security incidents in your organization but also:<\/p>\n\n\n\n To speed up your risk assessment, you can analyze Syteca logs and reports on past security incidents. They can help you define which risks are most common and dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Careless mistakes and a negligent attitude towards security rules can turn your employees from a valuable asset into a security vulnerability. Even without malicious intent, employees can hurt your organization by accidentally leaking their credentials, clicking on a phishing link, or uploading sensitive data to an unprotected cloud or USB device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s why you need to develop a short, efficient, and comprehensive program of security awareness training<\/a>. Having such a program in place helps you teach employees to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Increased employee turnover makes the issue of poor security awareness even more pressing for hotels. To help your new employees and temps get up to speed, you can create handy materials and reminders on cybersecurity rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Syteca provides you with records of past security incidents that you can use to educate your employees. Also, you can configure warning messages that will be shown each time a user violates your security rules. These messages will remind employees about the rules and explain their mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monitoring the activity of your employees and contractors helps to improve your hotel\u2019s cybersecurity in several ways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Syteca provides you with a rich user activity monitoring (UAM) feature set that will keep you informed of any action on your protected endpoints. Syteca captures the user\u2019s screen coupled with multiple types of metadata from keystrokes to connected USB devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can watch user sessions in real time or search for a particular event by any metadata record. This way, you\u2019ll be able to review, analyze, and collect data on any event in your network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n User Activity Monitoring<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hotels prefer to outsource non-core activities like the development of booking websites, PMS maintenance, and accounting. As an alternative to outsourcing, some hotels deploy ready third-party solutions like cloud services. Both options create lots of potential entry points inside the organization\u2019s network. If left unprotected, these entry points can be abused by hackers or malicious contractors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s why you need to secure and monitor the activity of third parties. With Syteca, you can:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third-Party Vendor Monitoring<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Detecting security violations by manually reviewing user activity is impossible for almost any hotel, where employees often work in shifts day and night. To keep threat detection and response swift, you can configure real-time alerts about suspicious user activity or deploy software that empowers you to respond to threats automatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, when Syteca detects prohibited user activity, it sends an email with the link to the user session and a description of the event to the responsible personnel. Using it, a security officer can assess and stop the threat in real time. Then, the officer can either kill the process that breaks the security rule or block the user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To protect your data from the most impactful risks, you can configure automated responses to particular user actions. In this case, Syteca will kill the process or block the user the second it detects a violation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Real-Time User Activity Alerts and Incident Response<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hotel employees often need access to several sensitive systems to do their jobs. For example, the receptionist has to be able to check bookings and payments, create and edit records about guests, and contact and coordinate hotel contractors. Some IT security managers simply assign such employees unlimited privileged access to hotel systems. It makes life easier both for hackers and malicious insiders, however, since they can access all your sensitive data without triggering the security system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can avoid this threat by configuring and managing access rights for all your users: employees, partners, contractors, etc. Allowing each user or user group to interact only with the resources they need greatly reduces security risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With Syteca, configuring access rights is quick and simple. Our platform relies on a role-based access control method<\/a>, so you can create groups for users with similar responsibilities and define which resources they can use. Changing group configurations or customizing them for a particular user takes only several minutes. Also, you can enable time-based access to your resources to prevent employees from connecting to your network outside working hours or approve access requests manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"COVID-related](\"https:\/\/www.syteca.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Cyber-Security-Solutions-for-Hotels-01.jpg\")
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What can we learn from 2021 hotel data breaches?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nHow to secure your hotel\u2019s data?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n1. Assess new security threats and risks<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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2. Conduct security awareness training for all employees<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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3. Establish employee activity monitoring<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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4. Gain control over third-party activities<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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5. Speed up security threat response<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
6. Minimize and manage user access<\/h3>\n\n\n\n