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Outsmart Hospitality Hackers

Christina Volpe, Associate Editor

HTmagazine.com
Posted On: 8/10/2010

It's official; 2009 was the year of data breaches in hospitality. In a multi-industry comparison report by Trustwave (www.trustwave.com), hackers infiltrated hospitality organizations more than any other industry last year, including retail, finance and more. According to the 2010 Global Security Report, hospitality breaches accounted for a whopping 38% of all breaches investigated by TrustWave SpiderLabs, and can be attributed to attacks on the systems responsible for the processing or transmission of payment card data.

The report identified software-based point of sale systems (POS) as the most frequently breached area across all of the industries involved (85%), because they represent the easiest method for criminals to obtain credit card data. For some companies in last year's industry-wide blitz, insecure network connections granted hackers unrestrained network access across properties, turning a single breach into a multi-site attack.

An operator's first line of defense against a data security breach is of course compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). Here are just a few solutions from the vendor community that can help:

Tableside & self-service solutions
Action Systems, Inc., (www.rmpos.com) makers of the Restaurant Manager POS, offers a version of its Write-on Handheld software for use on Apple's iPod touch. Write-on Handheld allows servers to take orders and process payments right at the table.