By Triana O'Keefe, editor Australian Hotelier
Verizon Enterprise Solutions (VES) has released its annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) which analysed cross-industry data from nearly 80,000 reported security incidents across 61 countries.
The report found that the hospitality sector experienced more point-of-sale (PoS) intrusions and denial of service (DoS) incidents than the all-industry average, accounting for 89 per cent of all incidents.
As businesses in accommodation and food services continue to rely on single-factor authentication such as usernames and passwords, they are a common target. Given the number of transactions a typical hospitality business handles a day, opportunities for theft are substantial.
Also concerning are the DoS attacks designed to bring down systems and networks. These are not only used to crash websites but can bring down critical systems such as websites, booking portals and billing systems, bringing customer service, sales and transactions to a standstill. This compromises a company’s brand and bottom line.
Verizon’s DBIR has also found that in 78 per cent of cases in the hospitality sector, incidents took months or longer to discover with businesses often notified by an external party such as fraud alert.