[ISN] Hospitality Industry On Mission To Curb Cyberattacks

http://www.darkreading.com/authentication/167901072/security/attacks-breaches/229301147/hospitality-industry-on-mission-to-curb-cyberattacks.html

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Darkreading 
March 16, 2011 

Three major hospitality trade associations have banded together to warn 
hotels nationwide about the rise in cyberattacks on their industry and 
to spell out the specific security measures the establishments should 
take ASAP to protect credit and debit card data.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA), Hotel Technology Next 
Generation (HTNG), and Hospitality Financial and Technology 
Professionals (HFTP) issued a rare joint statement that basically 
dispels the myth among some franchisees and smaller hospitality 
establishments that it's up to vendors or credit card brands to properly 
lock down credit and debit card data.

Hotels and motels are increasingly becoming targeted by cybercriminals 
trolling for credit and debit card data. Hospitality accounted for 15 
percent of the breaches in Verizon's 2010 Data Breach Investigations 
Report, and 10 percent of data breaches investigated by Trustware's 
SpiderLabs last year were from the hospitality industry -- more than 
government (6 percent) and financial services firms (6 percent). While 
that was actually a decrease from the year before, when hospitality was 
the No. 1 target with 38 percent of the breaches, Trustwave has warned 
that the hospitality industry should "remain on high alert." The 
organized crime group behind the hospitality hacks has basically 
expanded the scope of its targets to food and beverage (57 percent of 
the breaches this year) and retail (18 percent), according to Trustwave.

"Our objective is to make our industry hard enough so we are no longer 
interesting to cybergangs," says Douglas Rice, CEO of HTNG.

Franchises, meanwhile, worry about their brand reputation when one of 
their franchises suffers a high-profile breach. "And there's the 
potential for direct fines from [card] issuers. They do view the brands 
as having some responsibility for merchants operating underneath their 
brands," Rice says.

[...]


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