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Definitely Doug 11/17/23: The Hotel TV Dilemma
Posted: 11/17/2023

In case you missed the memo, people no longer watch television the way that they did ten years ago. Not at home, and not at hotels. Nielsen reported that streaming services cornered 34.8% of TV screen time in July 2022, when they overtook cable for the first time.

Property management systems (PMSs) fundamentally have changed very little since the 1980s. And many hotels still use systems that were built in the eighties, nineties, or aughts. Since then, massive technology changes have occurred: the mobile revolution, cloud computing, distributed ledgers, AI-based large language models, Web 3.0, and other innovations have fundamentally changed both the technological capabilities of software, the way it is designed and built, and expectations for user experience.

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Definitely Doug 10/20/23: Gluing It All Together
Posted: 10/20/2023

Hardly a day goes by that hotels do not express frustration about the inability to tie together key data sources and technology systems. This is not a new problem; it has been around for decades. Progress has been made on many fronts to be sure, but digitalization has created new issues much faster than solutions.

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What’s the Buzz Among Today’s Hoteliers?
Posted: 10/17/2023

What’s on the minds of hoteliers? What’s keeping them up at night? And what makes travelers happy and eager to return? Some of the best places to have these candid discussions are at the industry’s conferences and events, and this year’s lineup has not disappointed. From AAHOACON and BITAC, to HITEC and The Hospitality Show, I’ve been traveling steadily, attending 13 events since January.

Technology has become an indispensable part of the guest experience. As travelers increasingly expect tech-enabled convenience, hospitality businesses must continue innovating to meet these demands. While WiFi was once the primary tech offering for hotels, today's guests want more. Integrated proptech solutions are becoming the new standard.

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New POS Threat - Onsite Assessment vs. Check the Box

08/09/2016

by David Durko

Last week a new hacking device that threatens many POS and door lock systems circulated like wildfire. We have been fielding a large number of calls from clients and prospects asking questions about the story and the risks to their properties.

The reality is if this tool becomes generally available the threat landscape will expand significantly for hoteliers. The tone of our calls was somber since this is yet another risk our clients have to face. It also shines on the painfully slow rollout of EMV across all of the name brands (mag stripe vs. chip and pin).

The bright spot that came from our calls was a general agreement that having a data security firm perform an on-site assessment that includes interviewing, training and raising the overall awareness of the staff makes the property a little more secure. Certainly much more secure than a property that simply performs a “check-the-box” exercise. It also put a spotlight on the PCI controls that are often missed by hotels. Logging firewall activities, logging of OS and applications, file integrity monitoring, pentesting, vulnerability management and more.

If this hacking tool makes its way into the wild it will be difficult to prevent an attack. But assessment, awareness and management of cardholder systems could help mitigate the risks. At the end of the day an onsite assessment trumps “check the box.”

New hacking device may threaten door locks, PoS systems
Article by Elliott Mest

Data theft is a constant concern for hotels, but a new tool developed by a security researcher may raise the alarm on physical security in hospitality. Weston Hecker, a security researcher with Internet security company Rapid7, modified existing technology to create a device capable of reading and duplicating hotel keycards, and is even capable of guessing every room’s key across a property. The device was designed by altering the MagSpoof tool developed last year by hacker Samy Kamkar. At the time of its development, MagSpoof was able to wirelessly read magstripes off of cards used for door entry or payment transactions by producing a magnetic field similar to a mag stripe when swiped, storing card data for later use.

Hacker’s modification only adds $6 worth of hardware to the MagSpoof, and allows a hacker to take the information from any key, which includes encoded information regarding guestroom numbers and checkout dates, and then guesses the correct information to create a copy. The device can then run through every possible combination of these details before letting the user into a room. While hotel door locks continue their shift to radio frequency identification and Bluetooth technology and away from magstripes, it remains to be seen how this device would be used to access rooms under these circumstances. However, not all hotels have fully upgraded past magstripes, making them more vulnerable than ever to entry. At the same time, while credit card companies are shifting to chipped cards and card readers, magstripes still remain a popular option for travelers meaning point-of-sale systems could become a larger target. Hacker’s tool can inject keystrokes into a PoS system with a magstripe reader simply by being placed near it, forcing the reader to accept data as long as it remains within a few inches.