Marriott Hack Impacts 500 Million Guests: How Are You Protecting Your Clients Data?
This morning Marriott announce a massive data breach of their Starwood guest reservation database, exposing the personal information of 500 million guests who stayed at hotel chains including W, St. Regis, Sheraton, and Westin. If you have stayed at a Marriott owned property any time prior to September 10thof this year, you may be affected. You can read Marriott’s statement here:https://answers.kroll.com
Even more troubling, hackers have had what Marriott describes as “unauthorized access” to the database since 2014, giving them access to guests’ personal information including name, address, passport number, date of birth, and more—including an unspecified number who had their credit card details exposed.
The credit card information was encrypted, but it’s possible the hackers also stole the encryption keys necessary to decrypt them. Marriott cannot confirm if the hackers whether or not the hackers were able to decrypt the credit card numbers.
This is only the most recent in a series of high profile data breaches of corporate databases resulting in the exposure of hundreds of millions of client records.
The data breach has been covered across all news media platforms:
- Business Insider –500 million Marriott customers have had their data hacked
- CNN Business –Marriott reveals data breach of 500 million Starwood guests
- The Washington Post –Marriott discloses massive data breach affecting up to 500 million guests
When huge companies like Marriott, Equifax, and Target—or even technology companies like Facebook and Microsoft—suffer breaches of this magnitude on a regular basis, how can you know that your client data is secure? A nationwide survey concluded that half of all US business have been hacked in the last year, with at number expected to increase in the coming years. Are you firms systems vulnerable to attack? Contact us today and our cybersecurity experts will do a full Cybersecurity Risk Assessment of your IT infrastructure–a $1,000 value–completely free of charge.
It’s time to take cyber security seriously, for the safety of your clients information and future of your firm. Abacus Private Cloud delivers full spectrum cyber security with state of the art data centers, 256-bit encryption, 24/7 monitoring, proactive threat detection to safeguard your critical client.