The record which is speculated to be 500 million customers of the Marriott International hotel group has reportedly been involved in a major data breach. The hotel chain has revealed that the work of an unauthorized party has reportedly compromised the reservation of guests in the database of the Starwood division.
The hotel chain has revealed that they have conducted an internal investigation which brings out the fact that an attacker was able to access the network of Starwood for four years. And it dates back to 2014. The hotel chain company has also claimed that they will notify the customers whose records are in their database.
Back in 2016, Marriott International has bought Starwood and thus created the massive hotel chain in the entire world. The property of the hotel chain is comprised of over 5,800 properties. The brands of Starwood hotel are Sheraton, W Hotel, Four Point by Sheraton and Le Méridien. The hotel that comes under Marriott uses a different reservation system which is placed on a different network.
Marriott has revealed that an internal security tool has alerted the authorities that someone is attempting to breach in the database of Starwood. Upon investigation, the authorities discovered that “an unauthorized third party had allegedly copied and had also encrypted the information. Marriott revealed that the hotel chain’s database is comprised of around 500 million customers.
It is clear that is few of the records even included an encrypted payment made by credit card or debit card, and then it cannot be ruled out the enciphered keys are also stolen. The company has told in a statement that they deeply regret the fact that this incident has taken place. The company has even started notifying the authorities about the security breach. The company also came up with a website to provide information to the customers who have been directly affected due to this breach.
