What are the most effective ways to secure data in hospitality environments?

Using passwords is a thing of the past. Implement biometric, smart card, chip-based, multi-factor authentications, like those used in highly sensitive industries like financial services, defense, etc.

Hospitality staff would be the weakest list in data security in such environments. The staff are trained to be service-oriented to meet the needs of their customers. That makes them easy prey to phishing attacks, malware attacks, or pressure tactics, to compromise data security, in most cases unknowingly. Hence sensitizing hospitality staff on the repercussions of data breaches and training them appropriately are key to data security in the hospitality industry. In addition, implement "fine-grained" data access controls to encrypt or mask data at the cell/individual field level, which in real-time interfaces with data security policies.

Most software used in the hospitality industry are becoming SaaS solutions, which are updated by the SaaS provider. Hospitality businesses need to ensure that the SaaS solutions meet the latest software security standards. Also, perform regular penetration testing and security audits of such software.

The name of the game is be proactive. The CEO and Board of Directors do need to instill a proactive culture of trust vis a vis data protection practices. In order for this to happen, then need to receive actionable business oriented briefings that identifies (1) where the business critical data and systems are in the hospital environment and with vendors; (2) what resilience measures are in place such that if the hospital suffers an attack the organization is able to stand up operations seamlessly. This will also require table top exercises for the Board and the CEO to be able to envision, how they will handle oversight of the CISO and IT team in the middle of an incident. Increasingly companies have separate leadership response plans.

Another proactive strategy to consider (learned the hard way after over 20+ years in hospitality): Across the organization, work with engineers, marketers etc. to get colleagues in the habit of thinking about what data they really need for their initiatives, to design products/ initiatives to take only that data and to ensure the data is clearly tagged at the point at which it is taken. This will help all downstream encryption, storage etc discussions - and it makes data governance a team sport as data governance should be!

Encrypt sensitive data, implement strong access controls, regularly update software for security patches, conduct employee training on cybersecurity, use secure payment processing systems, employ firewalls and intrusion detection systems, and regularly audit and monitor network activity.