Adding to the list of POS Security breaches in the hospitality industry, a fresh credit card breach has reportedly happened at TheTrump Hotel Collection, linked to businessman and presidential candidate Donald Trump. It’s a string of fraud on customer credit cards that has reportedly happened. This security breach is said to have happened in the course of the past two to three months at different Trump Hotel properties including the Trump International Hotel New York, Trump Hotel Waikiki in Honolulu and the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Toronto. Investigations are on and the final, confirmed picture is yet to emerge. If confirmed, this would be the second such security breach at the Trump Hotels Collection in less than a year. A similar cyber attack had happened in July 2015 and hackers managed to steal sensitive information including credit card data and security codes.
POS Security breaches common in hospitality industry
POS Security breaches are not new in the hospitality industry. We’ve seen prominent hotel groups acknowledging that hackers had infiltrated their payment systems. Earlier this year, in January, the Hyatt Hotel chain had made a startling revelation stating that 250 of its properties worldwide were infected with money-stealing malware and that customer financial data may have been compromised. The reasons for such hacking so rampantly happening in the hospitality industry are of course obvious. There is so much of business happening and so much of personal data being stored and processed in the course of payments being made. Malware being used to work out credit card breach and other data theft is thus rather common these days in the sector.
On POS Security
POS Security is of utmost importance today. As we know POS (Point-of-Sale) systems are used in many areas of business, ranging from retail and entertainment sectors to healthcare and the hospitality industries. Things turn easier for those in the business as well as for the customers. At the same time, it becomes easy for hackers to cause POS Security breaches and credit card breaches. Stealing of valuable personal information thus happens rather rampantly.
What’s to be done?
As for POS Security, like any other aspect of internet and network security, it’s always prevention that’s most important. There, of course, is not much to be done after the damage is done.The best advisable thing would be to make sure that malware doesn’t get in and no POS Security breach happens. The first step that needs to be done is installing a trusted, effective anti-malware solution- one that specialises in combating POS malware and preventing POS Security breach. There are also other things to be done as regards combating POS Security breaches. These include reviewing systems periodically for unknown and dormant users, updating passwords regularly, limiting numbers of users, doing the payment processing only through a thoroughly secure network etc.
It’s to be remembered that tackling such breaches is of prime importance. Things like credit card breach etc could no doubt have a great negative impact on businesses and brand management.
