Continuing what is starting to feel like the grand tradition of recent, highly publicized, and devastating online attacks on American businesses, White Lodging, a manager of hotel franchises for nationwide hotel brands such as Marriott, Hilton, and Starwood, is investigating a reported data breach involving hotel customers’ payment information.  The alleged breach may have exposed credit and debit card information of thousands of guests at White-managed hotels around the country. The company has confirmed that it is actively investigating the breach, but has not provided definitive information on the extent of the damage or the number of hotel customers affected.  Much like other recent data breaches occurring at hotels, this breach will likely lead to costly class action litigation for White Lodging.

This incident is just the most recent of many incidents that clearly indicate that hotels are a fast-growing target for hackers.  The need is now greater than ever for hotels to take steps to protect themselves and their guests by properly training its employees, managers, and IT personnel to comply with the Payment Card Industry’s (“PCI’s”) robust data-security practices and policies. Hoteliers looking to protect themselves from the nightmare of data breaches need look no further than Venza’s PCI training modules,a leading source of such training used by hotels around the globe.

The Venza Group has partnered with the law firm Arnall Golden Gregory (AGG) to create a series of interactive eLearning modules to address PCI compliance in the hotel industry. Management, employees and IT are taught about the requirements they must support as part of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards.  The Venza Group also has partnered with AGG to create an interactive eLearning module to train hoteliers on general privacy and security awareness issues and on sexual harassment prevention.