Hotel cybersecurity guarantees company and client privacy. Training the sector’s employees and raising their awareness to ensure they don’t fall into poor practices guarantees actions will be taken more cautiously, preventing mistakes that may cause data to be exposed.

Security is essential when attempting to generate a client’s feeling of peace of mind and trust towards the establishment he or she stays at. It’s an important feeling when it comes to persuading guests to choose the establishment again as a place to stay on their next trip. Hotels handle a huge amount of data (identity documents, credit cards, personal addresses, etc.) which they’re obliged to manage so as to protect their clients’ identities.

On many occasions, their employees commit errors that endanger the security of the hotel and the privacy of its guests. Passwords they share incorrectly, professional accounts they link up to their personal devices and the disclosure of the company’s internal information are just some of the mistakes made by employees. Training and awareness are key to remedying these mistakes and to ensuring they don’t happen again.

Employees should be constantly informed of the proper practices to be followed, thus preventing the mistakes which, in many cases, lead to terrible consequences for the hotel and its clients. Poor professional practices are not the only issue. Sometimes, we can see hotels don’t invest enough in a good security configuration to enable them to prevent cyberattacks. Professionals from the hotel industry are often unaware of the actual importance of cybersecurity, with problems ranging from the manipulation of video surveillance cameras to the opening of doors without consent and the theft of the company’s sensitive information.

We must become more aware of the importance of the hotel having good protection to prevent cyberattacks. Ensuring the privacy of hotel clients by means of training and awareness-raising is essential to achieve the above. In addition, we should emphasize that there’s no need for the hotel owner to make a major investment to be well-protected.

For guests’ peace of mind, hotels should constantly carry out intrusion tests in order to evaluate the status of their systems, auditing their security from the point of view of potential external attacks. To perform this security assessment in an optimal way it’s best to carry out controlled attacks on the systems.

CEHAT-ITH