Another day, another cyber-attack! In early April, Omni Hotels & Resorts was the victim of a cyber-attack that brought down the entire IT system and led to a company-wide outage. The organization took immediate action and brought the entire network offline to isolate the issue, protect its data and prevent further damage from occurring. Unfortunately, this process heavily impacted the hotel’s operations and day-to-day functions, such as managing reservations, unlocking hotel room doors manually and using point-of-sale (POS) systems in restaurants and shops within the hotel. Some estimates expect this attack to cost the Omni over a million dollars. While unconfirmed by the hotel, several sources speculate that the type of cyber-attack was a ransomware attack similar to what happened to MGM in Las Vegas several months ago.

I was at an Omni Hotel for a conference in Nashville when this was going on. If I wanted to park I had to have exact change CASH or port somewhere else. If I wanted to eat there they said the card would be held and charged “sometime next week”. I can’t imaging the lost revenue, damaged reputation, lose of confidence, etc. they had that week and with customer of the over-term.

While most customers were aware of the inconveniences of the Omni outage, many weren’t aware of the dangers associated with cyber-attacks. When a network is compromised, unless you have high-grade tools to protect you, every device you connect to is put at risk. When you’re traveling, it’s important to treat everything like a risk to ensure your safety. In today’s article, we’re sharing a couple of tips to keep you safe when you’re on the road for work or even on vacation this summer.

1. Don’t connect to the public Wi-Fi in the hotel. Truthfully, this also applies to coffee shops, airport lounges, etc. If a network is compromised and you connect to it, you could be giving hackers access to your devices.
2. Turn off the auto-connect feature. Even if you don’t actively connect to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, if a hacker has set up a fake Wi-Fi network and your device auto-connects to it, that could be a big problem. Shut the feature off and only manually connect to sources you trust.
3. Use your phone’s hotspot. Instead of connecting to public Wi-Fi, most cell phones come equipped with a hotspot that allows your other devices to connect to your phone’s internet. If not, one call to your wireless provider can often add this feature.

These tips will help protect you, but if you travel for work or have employees who travel for work, it’s important that all work devices have professional-grade cybersecurity tools installed on them. You don’t want to send your sales team to a hotel-hosted trade show, and instead of bringing back a list of leads, they bring back malware that could shut down your company altogether.

There is one final lesson in this terrible incident that all SERVICE AREA business owners need to understand: No matter the size of the company, you can still be the victim of a cyber-attack. The Omni chain, which boasts over 50 properties nationwide, would likely have a large budget to defend itself from cyber-attacks and yet still fall victim to hackers. No system is 100% impenetrable, but small business owners who don’t have any security measures in place are putting a big red target on their backs.

If you don’t have a cybersecurity system in place, or if you do and someone else is managing it but you’d like a second opinion, we offer a FREE Security Risk Assessment. This assessment will go over every area of your network to identify if and where you are vulnerable to an attack and propose solutions to fix it.

Click here to book your Security Risk Assessment with one of our cybersecurity experts, or call our office at 214-550-0550.

Are you planning on buying gifts for the special women in your life for Mother’s Day? If you shop online, there are a few ways to do it SAFELY. During the holidays, cybercriminals ramp up various scams to capitalize on innocent people looking for gifts online. These scams range from fake offers to sham giveaways, all with the goal of stealing your money and information. Times and technology have changed drastically in just the last year, meaning what kept you safe before is no longer enough. In today’s article, we’ll share the best way to pay for your online purchases, the common scams to look out for and the top online shopping best practices to keep you safe.

How To Make Online Purchases Safely

Should you use your debit card to buy online? No! Debit cards are linked directly to your bank account. If you make a bad purchase online, it can be very difficult to get your money back once you’ve alerted your bank. To avoid headaches, hours on the phone arguing with customer support, losing money and, if things escalate enough, legal fees, use your credit card or a third-party payment system instead.

Credit cards have extensive fraud monitoring systems, which can often catch discrepancies as they occur. These companies use statistical analysis and machine learning to track and analyze your transactions to quickly identify suspicious activity, allowing you to dispute the purchases and avoid being charged.

Some credit card companies, like Capital One, go a step further to keep you secure by offering virtual credit cards. These cards provide you with a random 16-digit number, a three-digit CVV and an expiration date that you can use for online or even in-store purchases. While these DO connect to your real accounts, retailers are unable to see your actual card details, keeping your information secure. Bonus: These can be “turned off” at any time, eliminating the hassle of canceling unneeded subscriptions without going through the merchant.

Third-party tools like PayPal are also a great option because no personal information is exchanged with the seller. The company you’re purchasing from does not receive your financial or banking information, keeping your data secure.

Online Shopping Best Practices

Using a credit card, virtual card or third-party payment tool is a great start, but it isn’t the only proactive step you should be taking to stay safe online. If you’re making purchases online, make sure you’re also:

Shopping from real websites – Cybercriminals will set up fake websites that look exactly like big-name websites. Go to the REAL website and search for the item you’re looking for.

Avoid too-good-to-be-true offers – If it sounds like a scam, it’s probably a scam! If you’re interested, go to the website and look up the deal to see if it exists.

Do NOT click on promo links in e-mails – Cybercriminals will set up spoof e-mails mirroring your favorite brands. When you click on the offer links, they can infect your network.

Use a VPN – This hides your location and web browsing information from snoopers.

Don’t save your information – Password tools are trying to make your life easier by saving your payment information, but they make you more vulnerable to having it swiped.

Use unique logins for loyalty accounts – Using the same e-mail and password combo for all your loyalty accounts means that if one is compromised, a smart hacker could break into all of them, and some will have your payment information available.

Set up alerts – Go into your banking system and enable notifications. You can request to be notified when any purchases or purchases over a certain amount are made, so you can quickly report any suspicious activity.

Cybercriminals will use any method they can to steal your information and money. To stay safe, you must take a proactive approach to protecting your financial information. This is equally true for your business. If hackers are willing to put this much effort into stealing money for low-dollar purchases, imagine what they would do to access your company accounts. Your customer data, employee information, trade secrets and more can be worth millions to them.

If you’re not sure if your company is as secure as it should be or you just want to get a second set of eyes on your system to make sure there aren’t any holes in your security, we’ll perform a FREE Network Security Assessment for you. We’ll go through our multi-step security checklist and let you know if and where cybercriminals can get into your network.

Click here to book your FREE Network Security Assessment now or call our office at 214-550-0550.