The New Ways Cybercriminals Are Attacking Travel Companies
Cyber breaches seem to make headlines every day, with Uber, InterContinental Hotels Group and Marriott International among the major travel brands to have recently fallen victim to attackers. Whether it’s a multinational corporation or a small startup, no travel company is immune to the threat of cybercriminals and fraudsters, experts say.
Travel and leisure is one of the most impacted industries globally, with digital fraud attempts rising 155.9% in the last year, according to a forthcoming report by Phocuswright. Cyberattacks in the travel sector mainly target credit cards, personal identifiable information, reward programs and publicly available internet, Phocuswright finds. Future vulnerabilities include artificial intelligence and the metaverse.
“The travel industry functions in an environment where numerous potential points of failure make the prevention and detection of cybersecurity breaches significantly more difficult relative to other industries,” says Robert Cole, senior research analyst, lodging and leisure travel at Phocuswright.
Eighty-eight percent of corporate boards regard cybersecurity as a business risk rather than solely a technical IT problem, the study shows. The challenge for business leaders is to manage the “internal corporate dissonance” that comes with marketing and operations teams wanting to simplify access to information that legal and financial teams prefer were never captured in the first place.
