US Secret Service Alerts Millennium and Noble House Hotels and Resorts of Suspected Data Breach

Hotel chains around the world remain to be one of the most inconspicuous entities to consumers when it comes to the privacy and security of personal data. In reality, hotel chains harbor massive amounts of personal consumer data and have become one of many prime targets for cybercrooks to attack and breach systems harboring such information.

As it turns out, the two hotel chains, Millennium Hotels & Resorts, and Noble House Hotels and Resorts, were warned by the U.S. Secret Service of a suspected data breach that later turned out to be a legitimate case that resulted in the collection of data through point of sale (PoS) systems.

Cybercrooks have long been in the game of attacking hotel chains making away with a bounty of consumer data. One part of entry for data breaches within Hotel chains remains to be their PoS systems, which is compromised to relinquish credit card data and all information surrounding electronic payments. Both the Millennium and Noble House Hotels and Resorts were unaware of any data breaches until the U.S. Secret Service came out to notify the hotel chains through a tip.

With both hotel chains tipped off by the US Secret Service, officials scrambled to further investigate a potential security breach, which later turned out to be that that compromised the Noble House Hotels & Resort properties between April 26, 2016, and June 8. 2016. Also, according to the hotel chain, the data breach was limited to only one of their properties, the Ocean Key Resort & Spa. The hotel was later able to track down the systems infected with specialized malware to breach their infrastructure through a PoS attack, which turned out to be several on-site establishments.

The Millennium Hotels & Resorts data breach is a slightly different story, although they were also tipped off by the US Secret Service of a possible breach through their PoS systems. Unfortunately, Millennium Hotels & Resorts had all of their 14 hotel properties affected by the breach, which took place between March 2016 and June 2016. In the Millennium breach, it is suspected that customers had their payment card data stolen. Though, Millennium Hotels & Resorts has yet to confirm definitively that card breach took place due to the malware installed on its PoS systems, which is claimed to be a common occurrence during such data infiltration event.

After the data breaches were verified with some others as being "researched," both hotel chains will take the proactive steps of providing identity fraud protection for their customers. Such a practice is common placed and demanded by US laws in any case where consumer's data is put in danger.

Hotel chains are a massive target for scammers and cybercrooks. With the massive amount of traffic in the form of customers that pass through hotels, hackers consider data breaches on hotels as pure gold. Not to mention, hotel guests at top-tier chains are prime targets as they have a clean slate to use when a cybercrook steals their identity through the use of breached data.