Marriott confesses to severe data breach

Munich. Hackers are able to crack a hotel in 20 minutes, servers in 10 minutes, check-in procedures in 15 minutes. Digital attacks on hospitality properties have increased by more than 40 percent from 2015 to 2016, and are still on the rise. The hospitality segment, however, seems to greatly underestimate the issue: too many operators actually have no clue how to prevent threats and to react in case of attack. And even worse: The real damage is not the attack itself but the guests' reaction. They will stay away from an "unsecure" hotel. At the recent "Hospitality Industry Dialogue", the hotel conference at Expo Real, cyber experts, hoteliers and investors debated one of the industry's hottest topics.

Berlin. Google is an excellent assistant when it comes to illegally hacking other IT systems. Webcams can easily be used to observe and eavesdrop. And filtering the right password is often only a matter of time for the experienced hacker. The consequences of the widespread negligence in handling customer data were dramatically illustrated at the 10th ITB Hospitality Day at the ITB Berlin last week, live in front of an interested audience. "Check out - Hack in" was the title of the 'live hack' at the beginning of the conference. See it for yourself!

Glasgow/Eschborn. Last Monday, the British newspaper "The Sunday Herald" reported that a hacker based in India had recently managed to steal electronic data on over eight million hotel guests of Best Western Hotels. The hotel group denied the claim, though did admit that there had been an incident on one German hotel. The British technology journalist who reported on the incident gave hospitalityInside.com the details.