Recently, the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau issued a warning to the hospitality sector notifying them that they are increasingly being targeted by criminals impersonating IT providers.
Typically, fraudsters will call restaurants and hotels purporting to be a representative of the company that provides their reservation or booking system. The criminals will try to convince the employee to reveal their login details, often under the guise that it's required in order to complete an important software installation.
Once an attacker gains access to a business's computer systems, they'll steal any customer data they come across, this will often include databases of customer names and contact details. This data will then be used to perpetrate targeted phishing scams that are highly convincing. For example, victims have reported receiving calls from people impersonating a restaurant or hotel they have a reservation with. The caller requests a payment from the victim claiming that it's required in order to confirm their reservation.
There are risks and cybersecurity controls that are applicable to all businesses, no matter what industry they are in or what sector of customer they service. Still, as a business in the hotels and hospitality industry, there are some specific risks that only you have to face.
We have worked with a Senior Leader working in the Hotel sector to produce a guide that highlights the cybersecurity basics that all businesses can’t ignore and should follow. The guide will view them in light of the unique business processes hotels and hospitality companies have to service our guests. We’ll aim to give you practical advice you can use today, things to plan for and where you can get more help from.
This guide will walk you through 8 types of cyber attacks that hotels and hospitality businesses are particularly vulnerable to. This is not to say it won’t happen to other businesses, but due to the nature of the data collected, the information that is shared, the way payments are processed, the risk of these types of cyber attacks happening is high.
Should you need some help if a data breach occurred or you are looking for some ongoing protection then there’s information to cover this to.
So, what’s stopping you? Download the full guide here.