Tag Archives: Cybercrime

by | January 14, 2015 · 8:54 am

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “Does YOUR Website Have to be Accessible Under the Americans with Disabilities Act?”

Clearly, it has no brick-and-mortar store that we can shop in so the answer should be “no ADA coverage for its website.” That is exactly what happened in its California district court case (Cullen).Handicap-Assessible1-300x225 But, in Massachusetts, the district court case (National Association of the Deaf) went the other way. Law school professors call such cases “outliers,” but in the courtroom today’s outlier sometimes becomes tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

Is the internet a place of public accommodation: a virtual town hall or a virtual shopping mall or a virtual movie theater? Courts still struggle with that.

Physicalist courts say that the ADA requires a physical location. Ouelette v. Viacom, No. cv 10-133-M-DWM-JCL, 2011 WL 1882780 (D. Mont. March 31, 2011) (no ADA claim re YouTube); Noah v. AOL Time Warner, 261 F. Supp. 2d 532 (E.D. Va. 2003) (same re: chat room); Earll v. eBay, Inc., No. 5:11-cv-00262-JF (HRL), 2011 WL 3955485 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 7, 2011) (same: no ADA claim re eBay); Cullen v. Netflix, Inc., 880 F. Supp. 2d 1017 (N.D. Cal. 2012) (same: no ADA claim re Netflix); Jancik v. Redbox Automated Retail, LLC, No. SACV 13-1387-DOC, 2014 WL 1920751 (C.D. Cal. May 14, 2014) (same: no ADA claim re redboxinstant.com).

Virtualist courts say there are places in the heart and in the mind too. Those courts proclaim that the core meaning of the ADA is that “the owner or operator of a store, hotel, restaurant, dentist’s office, travel agency, theater, Website, or other facility (whether in physical space or in electronic space …) that is open to the public cannot exclude disabled persons from entering the facility and, once in, from using the facility in the same way that the nondisabled do.”

For more: http://bit.ly/1KJS79f

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by | January 9, 2015 · 8:06 am

Hospitality Industry Risk Management Update: “Front Desk Best Practices”

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/96622404 w=500&h=281]

Petra Risk Solutions’ Loss Control Manager, Marco Johnson, offers a P3 Hospitality Risk Report – ‘Front Desk Best Practices’. 

P3 (Petra Plus Process) is the Risk Management Division of Petra Risk Solutions – America ’s largest independent insurance brokerage devoted exclusively to the hospitality marketplace.

For more information on Petra and P3 visit petrarisksolutions.com or call 800.466.8951.

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by | December 30, 2014 · 8:27 am

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “Marriott hotels lobby FCC for right to block outside Wi-Fi”

Most obviously, hotels would have a monopoly over Internet access and could charge guests with exorbitant Wi-Fi fees; much like Marriott did with its $1,000 access rates at the Gaylord Opryland HotelBlock wifi…Worse yet, hotels and other enterprises could also easily censor access to content deemed undesirable to the business via the Wi-Fi access contract terms. For example, Hilton could block all access to travel booking websites that list hotels with lower rates.

As the battle for Net Neutrality rages on, Federal regulators may soon be ruling in another dispute between consumer access and business control of the Internet.

In a petition to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission made public last week, the American Hospitality & Lodging Association and Marriott International asked the FCC to declare that a hotel operate can deploy equipment that “may result in ‘interference with or cause interference’ to a Part 15 [Wi-Fi] device being used by a guest on the operator’s property.”

“Wi-Fi network operators should be able to manage their networks in order to provide a secure and reliable Wi-Fi service to guests on their premises,” Marriott argued.

For more: http://bit.ly/1vEjyXZ

 

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by | December 5, 2014 · 10:20 am

Hospitality Industry Risk Management Update: “Preventing Credit Card Fraud at Hotels” (VIDEO)

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/113722566 w=500&h=281]

Petra Risk Solutions’ Loss Control Manager, Matt Karp, offers a P3 Hospitality Risk Report – ‘Preventing Credit Card Fraud at Hotels’. 

P3 (Petra Plus Process) is the Risk Management Division of Petra Risk Solutions – America ’s largest independent insurance brokerage devoted exclusively to the hospitality marketplace.

For more information on Petra and P3 visit petrarisksolutions.com or call 800.466.8951.

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by | December 3, 2014 · 8:57 am

Hospitality Industry Security Update: “The Case For Giving Hotels the Same Health Grades as Restaurants”

Many hotels fail to perform adequate background checks on job applicants before hiring them. In September 2011, a woman staying at a Best Western hotel in Arizona woke up in the middle of the nightWashington Post Security to find a man standing over her bed. She says the man raped her. He was a registered level-3 sex offender, according to news reports, but Best Western had hired him as a night clerk and given him a master key to guest rooms, allowing him unfettered access to turn any of its female guests into his next victims

The difference between a hotel room at $75 a night and $750 a night is the view, the extra shampoo, the cost of the pillows, the fluff of the towels. Price is a measure of comfort and service. What must always be the same — at every price — is your security, your safety and cleanliness. Unfortunately, it’s not. Across the country, hotels are skimping on key safety and security measures, and the consequences range from stolen laptops and Peeping Toms to sexual assaults and robbery at gunpoint. More than 125 property crimes are committed in hotels and motels every day, in addition to more than 21 violent crimes (excluding murders).

For more: http://wapo.st/1vnfYFb

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by | November 25, 2014 · 9:37 am

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Avoid Being a Target of Room Block Poachers, Pirates”

The APEX workgroup is focused on educating the market on what meeting planners and suppliers can do to help minimize the impact of these poachers, pirates, and new disruptive companies.Poaching-620x330 Consumer education is another important piece of the puzzle, especially as recent headline-grabbing breaches have made data security top of mind. “It’s important to let people know we cannot control their data if they’re not booking through the official housing agency and the official hotel,” he says.

Room block poaching refers to businesses that actively seek to recruit or divert event attendees away from official room blocks and into other hotel bookings. “This is pervasive,” says Mike Dominguez, senior vice president of corporate sales at MGM Resorts International. “It’s touching everybody now, primarily in the big cities that have larger citywide conventions.”

Dominguez is part of a workgroup formed by the Convention Industry Council’s Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX) that intends to develop awareness and best practices for minimizing the impact of room block poaching.
The practice isn’t new, but technology has made it easier for accessibility to a customer, Dominguez says. Poachers attack public information, such as exhibitor lists on conference websites.

For more: http://bit.ly/1vKaPbs

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by | November 20, 2014 · 10:30 am

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “How Much Bandwidth Does Your Property Need?”

Hoteliers need to know how the bandwidth is currently being used so they can prioritize different types of usage. Packet inspection equipment can help you figure out if guests are using the Internetbandwidth to download movie torrents or to make voice over IP calls, and then you can prioritize and make more bandwidth available for one activity over the other. “You don’t want to overpay for excess bandwidth when it isn’t necessary,”

Two years ago, BioMarin, a pharmaceutical firm based in San Rafael, Calif., called Inn Marin to book an offsite training session. This wasn’t unusual since the 69-room independent hotel is located eight miles up the road from the company’s headquarters. And with only 35 people attending, the meeting requirements were far from onerous. But there was one last-minute request that nearly caused Inn Marin to lose this booking. BioMarin needed an Internet connection that was six megabits per second (Mbps) or faster to allow 20 desktop computers to log into the corporate server in San Rafael. And the DSL line coming into the hotel was only capable of 1 Mbps down and 1/2 Mbps up. “I just about had a heart attack,” says Inn Marin General Manager Robert Marshall. “That’s when I realized that we couldn’t keep doing business like this.”

For more: http://bit.ly/1p3ciar

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by | November 19, 2014 · 9:48 am

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “How Tech Will Make Your Hotel Room Feel Like Home (Or Better)”

In the wireless Internet age, guests increasingly expect a personalized experience abroad as well as at home. That can be tough on hotels, as rapid changes in technology makeforbes it difficult and expensive for them to adapt. A few years ago, hotels equipped themselves to handle two mobile devices per guest. Now, guests may have three or more, and just when they thought they had needs covered, hotels have to build more robust networks.

When you receive your morning wake-up call at theWit hotel in Chicago, there’s no robotic voice intoning, “It’s time for your wakeup call.” Instead, you can be rousted by a very different message:

“Hey you dirty rat, this is Al Capone reminding you to get your rotten bones out of that sack. Now get moving—I’ve got an overdue Valentine’s Day gift for Elliot Ness I’ve still got to deliver! [Laughter and gun shots].”

Or perhaps you’d rather hear Muddy Waters. Or Ann Landers. The touchscreen next to the phones in all of the hotel’s 310 rooms lets you choose who will urge you to rise and shine. Touch that same screen to request extra pillows, get a toothbrush or order meals—without ever picking up the phone.

For more: http://onforb.es/1uwkOOA

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by | November 17, 2014 · 9:30 am

Hospitality Industry Security Update: “Cybersecurity Needs Planning, Periodic Review”

Whatever the cost, hoteliers are advised to take certain precautions. “Complacency” is dangerous, Schoshinski said, adding that hoteliers should update security protection plans periodicallyhackers…Despite such resources and other preventative measures in the hotel industry, “the bad guys are getting smarter,” Cividanes said. “The bad guys are watching what you do.

Data security breaches, a hot topic at last year’s Hotel & Lodging Legal Summit, took center stage again at the 2014 conference as the No. 1 topic that keeps hospitality lawyers “awake at night,” said Robert Lannan, program co-chair and principal of Lannan Legal PLLC.

His opening remarks mentioned several headline-making cases, including breaches at Target, Home Depot and White Lodging, where it was revealed in January 2013 that attackers allegedly collected customer credit and debit card numbers, security codes, card expiration dates and other personal information from guests who had stayed at 14 hotels.

For more: http://bit.ly/1zwrVIk

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by | November 12, 2014 · 9:42 am

Hospitality Industry Security Update: “Hackers Using Hotel Wi-Fi to Check Into Victims’ Computers”

Safeguarding against such an attack can be difficult for hotel guests. The best defense is to double check update alerts that pop up on your computer during a stay in a hotel.hackers Go to the software vendor’s site directly to see if an update has been posted and download it directly from there. Though, of course, this won’t help if the attackers are able to redirect your machine to a malicious download site

A hacking campaign known as Darkhotel has been deployed by Hackers to steal sensitive information from business executives, security researchers have revealed.

How it happened is that the sophisticated attackers had been lurking on the hotel’s network for days waiting for him to check in. They uploaded their malware to the hotel’s server days before then deleted it from the hotel network days after.

For more: http://bit.ly/1B9M6jS

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