Wyndham Hotels Hacked Again

February 28, 2010 by V3.co.uk

Note from Nick: Electronic security at every level of business can have problems. Complacency is the biggest problem we face. If you are a business owner or a decision-maker, have someone check and re-check your security measures now.

International hotel group Wyndham Hotels and Resorts (WHR) has suffered yet another serious data breach after hackers broke into its computer systems, stealing customer names and payment card information.

According to an open letter posted on the firm's site, the luxury hotel group discovered the attack, which targeted one of its data centers, in late January.

"By going through the centralized network connections, the hacker was then able to access and download information from several, but not all, of the WHR hotels and remove payment card information of a small percentage of our WHR customers," read the letter.

"In addition to ensuring that the hack was immediately terminated and disabled, we promptly retained a qualified investigator to assess the problem and ensure that we had isolated it, and then to help us implement the proper changes to strengthen and improve the security of our connections with each of our branded properties."

The company also hired an investigation firm to assess and improve the security at "each hotel property in the system".

Wyndham also notified the US Secret Service and several state attorneys, and has provided the credit card companies with the numbers of all compromised cards so that they can monitor usage.

Understandably the hotel group tried to play down the significance of the breach, its third in a year.