In late June, the National Consumers League (NCL) launched what it calls the “#DataInsecurity Project” to raise awareness of and push for action to improve consumer data security.  The NCL kicked off the project by announcing a cross-country “tour” of national events which will feature discussions by experts from the FTC and State AGs offices.  Additionally, the NCL released a new survey of identify fraud victims entitled the “#DataInsecurity Report,” which found that consumers are calling for the government to take action on data security and identity theft and that consumers are losing trust in companies’ abilities to safeguard their information.  The study found that the impact of data breaches on consumers has been severe, with 61 percent of surveyed data breach victims reporting that their breached information was used to commit fraud against them.  Additionally, nearly half of the surveyed victims stated that they did not know where the information which was used to defraud them was compromised.

This is yet another call to action which places further pressure on the Federal government to respond in the wake of growing awareness of and concern about data security practices and regulation in the United States.   Accordingly, it is more important than ever for companies, including hotels, to properly train employees, ensure that an appropriate breach response plan has been put in place, and ensure that policies are in place to adequately protect customer information.   Hotels can help protect themselves from the risk of data breach by properly training their employees to comply with robust data-security practices and policies by utilizing Venza’s PCI training modules or other custom learning solutions.

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.