Following the news about the Hard Rock and Loews Hotel breaches, Ermis Sfakiyanudis, Cybersecurity Expert and CEO at Trivalent commented below.
Ermis Sfakiyanudis, Cybersecurity Expert and CEO at Trivalent:
“The Hard Rock Hotels & Casinos and Loews Hotels breaches highlight the critical need for better data protection across all industries—particularly those that utilize personally identifiable information (PII) data, such as hospitality and retail. In this case, the attacker gained unauthorized access to a third-party reservation system to attain unencrypted credit card payment information, as well as some guest names, addresses and phone numbers. Not only does this breach serve as an example of the dangers third party companies can pose to enterprise data that is not properly protected, it also opens up a larger discussion around traditional encryption. With the onslaught of high profile breaches so far this year, encryption alone has proven it is no longer enough to protect sensitive information, especially against next level threats like ransomware. The only way to get ahead of data breaches is to address them as a likely probability, rather than an impossibility. Only then will enterprises begin to embrace next generation protection that secures data at the file level, rendering it useless to unauthorized users—even in the event of a breach.”
