Customers visiting Hyatt Hotels are yet to find out if they could be victim of another credit card breach across some of the company’s hotels.
Hyatt Hotels fell victim to a second security hack between March and July earlier this year, affecting 41 hotels around the world according to the company.
The cause of the malware intrusion across certain Hotels was due to hackers inserting malicious software from a third party, which gained access to card data. Guests could have had their card affected by the breach after manually inputting or swiping their cards on arrival at the hotel.
In response to the breach, the hotel chain has launched an investigation into the malware. Hyatt Hotels has teamed up with third-party experts, payment card networks and authorities, to understand how the incident happened and why.
Chuck Floyd, Global President of Operations at Hyatt Hotels, said: “We understand the importance of protecting customer information and securing our systems and his incident is something we take seriously.
“It’s important to Hyatt that we notify guests and provide helpful information about steps they can take, and we have directly contacted all guests for whom we have appropriate contact information that checked in to an affected hotel during the at-risk dates, and we are sorry for the inconvenience and concern this may cause our guests.”
It isn’t the first time Hyatt Hotels has suffered a security breach. Last year even more hotels were affected, with the total number being 20 with more customers at risk.
NuData Security believes companies like hotels should have better, stronger security measures put in place when dealing with such a vast amount of sensitive data like card details.
Lisa Baergen, Director at NuData Security, said: “The harvested customer payment data is extremely valuable data that will be sold on the Dark Web or used in credit card cycling scans.
“It’s imperative that every organisation handling this level of sensitive payment and customer data consider adopting more advanced security measures in the form of multi-layered solutions.”
Customers can find out whether they have been affected by the breach by visiting Hyatt Hotels’ website, which has given a list of affected hotels and at-risk dates for guests, to see if they have been affected.
