Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) has had a reveal yet another data breach of its customer’s credit and debit card information dating back to late 2016.
The company has yet to explicitly mention the exact number of impacted locations and customers, but a list on their website shows a huge number across the United States and Puerto Rico. IHG has confirmed the franchises were affected between September 29 and December 29, 2016.
In a statement made by IHG:
“Although there is no evidence of unauthorized access to payment card data after December 29 2016, confirmation that the malware was eradicated did not occur until the properties were investigated in February and March 2017…
"The malware searched for track data (which sometimes has cardholder name in addition to card number, expiration date, and internal verification code) read from the magnetic stripe of a payment card as it was being routed through the affected hotel server. There is no indication that other guest information was affected.”
The hotel industry has historically had poor security measures in place. Within the last two years, we’ve seen POS breaches impact hotel chains like Wyndham Worldwide, Trump Hotels, Evans Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, to Hyatt Hotels and HEI Hotels & Resorts, just to name a few.
The PCI DSS compliance standards require an organization to implement solutions like File Integrity Monitoring, but very few retailers operate these requirements sufficiently well. The hospitality industry is a prime example of an industry not taking achieving, proving and remaining compliant seriously enough.
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