According to Verizon‘s newest annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), malware outbreaks on point-of-sale methods used at the front desk and hotel restaurant systems “are completely uncontrolled” in the service sector. The service is a top industry for point-of-sale interventions in this year’s data, with 87% of violations within that pattern.
Other hotel chains that revealed this past week taking hit in the Sabre breach aggregate 11 Hard Rock properties different chain hit by various card breach incidents Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts including at least two dozen Loews Hotels in the United States and Canada.
Given its poor record of neglecting to protect customer card data, you might consider the accommodation business would be eager to appease guests who may previously be concerned that handing over their card at the resort check-in desk also means consigning that card to cyber crooks.
However, consider this year I’ve been hard-pressed to gain any of the major hotel chains that allow more secure chip-based cards, which are intended to make card data secure by point-of-sale malware and skimmers much further difficult to turn into bogus cards.
True, chip cards alone aren’t proceeding to solve the whole problem. Hotels and other retailers that achieve the ability to process chip cards still must to ensure the data is encrypted at every step of the sale known as “point-to-point” or “end-to-end” encryption. Investing in technology like tokenization which allows retailers to store a language that describes the customer’s card data rather of the card data itself also can help businesses become less of a target.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so disturbing if those of us concerned about security or annoyed just at getting our cards returned three or four times a year due to deception could stay at a major hotel chain in the United States and just pay with cash. But alas, we’re speaking about an industry that typically requires customers to pay by credit card.
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