Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Audits

Hilton Reaches $700,000 Settlement Over Data Breaches

U.S. hotel chain Hilton has reached a settlement with the states of New York and Vermont over the payment card breaches suffered by the company in 2014 and 2015.

Hilton has agreed to pay $700,000 – $400,000 to New York and $300,000 to Vermont – and promised to take steps to improve its data security and breach disclosure practices.

U.S. hotel chain Hilton has reached a settlement with the states of New York and Vermont over the payment card breaches suffered by the company in 2014 and 2015.

Hilton has agreed to pay $700,000 – $400,000 to New York and $300,000 to Vermont – and promised to take steps to improve its data security and breach disclosure practices.

The Attorneys General of New York and Vermont launched an investigation into two separate security incidents reported by Hilton back in 2015. The hotel chain determined at the time that attackers had accessed information on at least 363,000 credit cards.

The first intrusion was discovered on February 10, 2015, when a computer services provider informed Hilton of suspicious traffic from one of its systems. An investigation revealed that malware designed to steal payment card data had been active on the company’s systems between November 18 and December 5, 2014.

In the second intrusion, discovered in July 2015, attackers used a piece of malware to collect more than 363,000 payment card numbers between April 21 and July 27, 2015. Investigators discovered the data in a file that had been prepared for exfiltration.

However, Hilton only informed customers about the breaches in November 2015, more than 9 months after the first intrusion was discovered. Hilton argued that there had been no evidence that the payment card data was actually exfiltrated by the attackers, but investigators were unable to review all logs due to steps taken by the cybercriminals to cover their tracks.

Authorities were displeased with the fact that it took the company so long to alert customers. In accordance with New York’s General Business Law, organizations must disclose data breaches in the “most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay,” which Hilton did not do.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

The investigation conducted by the Vermont and New York Attorneys General also revealed that Hilton had not been in compliance with certain requirements of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Authorities also determined that Hilton broke laws prohibiting deceptive acts and practices by telling customers that their personal information was protected using reasonable data security mechanisms.

As part of the settlement, in addition to paying $700,000, Hilton has agreed to notify consumers faster in case of future incidents, create and maintain a comprehensive data security program, and perform annual assessments for PCI DSS compliance.

Hilton is just one of the many hotel chains that suffered payment card breaches in the past few years. The list also includes Hyatt, Trump, Millennium, InterContinental, Omni, Mandarin Oriental, and Kimpton hotels.

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

SecurityWeek’s Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit brings together security practitioners from around the world to share war stories on breaches, APT attacks and threat intelligence.

Register

Securityweek’s CISO Forum will address issues and challenges that are top of mind for today’s security leaders and what the future looks like as chief defenders of the enterprise.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

CISO Strategy

SecurityWeek spoke with more than 300 cybersecurity experts to see what is bubbling beneath the surface, and examine how those evolving threats will present...