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14
Jun
2024
The Power of More: Benefits of MFA for Your Hospitality Business

The Power of More: Benefits of MFA for Your Hospitality Business

Posted by navitend

The Power of More: Benefits of MFA for Your Hospitality Business

Whether you run a charming bed-and-breakfast, a trendy boutique hotel, or a luxury resort with endless amenities and activities like the one pictured below, chances are technology is essential to your everyday operations. The average hotel, motel, or resort uses 20 different software applications daily¹. For example, suppose you utilize a property management system, or PMS. The PMS is a central hub where your staff can perform key hotel operations – such as guest check-in and check-out, reservation management, and profile management – without needlessly switching between platforms¹. Meanwhile, chances are you also have electronic point-of-sale (POS) systems installed in your restaurant and/or gift shop. Unfortunately, this influx of technology into the hospitality industry makes your hotel, motel, or resort more vulnerable than ever to dangerous cyberthreats, which could result in costly data breaches and even costlier financial losses². Now, you may ask yourself, “How can I protect my hospitality business from data breaches and other digital disasters?”

(Image courtesy of https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/ctdca-jw-marriott-desert-springs-resort-and-spa/overview/)

Meet multi-factor authentication, or MFA for short. As we outlined in a previous article, MFA requires users to provide at least two authentication factors to verify their respective identities². For instance, in addition to a username and password, these factors can include things users have – such as

smart cards – plus something they are, including biometrics like fingerprints or facial recognition². In this article, we will explore the benefits that MFA has for your hospitality business.

(Image courtesy of https://www.globalsign.com/en/blog/what-is-multi-factor-authentication)

One benefit of MFA for your hotel, motel, or resort is that it enhances your overall security². By providing additional layers of security besides a simple username and password, MFA makes it more difficult for cybercriminals to access and infiltrate your business’s sensitive data, even if they steal your login credentials². Considering the average hospitality data breach costs $3.36 million, and the average breach resulting from stolen or compromised credentials costs $4.62 million³, MFA is an investment well worth making to ensure that your hospitality business is secure.

Another advantage MFA offers hotels, motels, and resorts like yours is that it helps you comply with the relevant regulations surrounding your business². Chances are you process credit and debit card payments every day, not only for guest reservations, but also in places like your onsite gift shop, fitness center, restaurant, and spa, if you have them. Therefore, you must comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) ². Meanwhile, if you conduct business within the European Union, you must adhere to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ². Keep in mind, too, that PCI DSS violations range from $5,000 per month for one to three months of noncompliance to $50,000 per month if you fail to comply for seven months or longer⁴. Thankfully, however, MFA can help your hotel, motel, or resort maintain compliance and avoid hefty fines for violating them².

While MFA improves hospitality businesses’ overall security and helps ensure regulatory compliance, it is also more user-friendly than ever before². Many MFA solutions easily authenticate users – be they guests or hotel staff – with only a single tap or instant facial recognition². This not only

streamlines the login process, but it also reduces the risk of user error². In short, MFA can help you create seamless, predictably awesome login experiences for guests and employees alike.

Still another benefit of MFA for your hotel, motel, or resort is that it protects against dangerous insider threats². By implementing MFA across your hotel’s digital platforms, you can prevent employees from accessing any sensitive information or systems they do not need for their daily work tasks². For example, your housekeeping and restaurant staff need not access trade secrets or sensitive financial records. This in turn reduces the probability that your employees will steal or sabotage data maliciously². When you consider that the average malicious insider attack costs $4.90 million, according to IBM³, you must not overlook the value MFA has for your hospitality business.

You can also benefit from customizing MFA to meet your hotel, motel, or resort’s exact needs². For instance, you may require guests to use a smart card, single-use passcode, or biometric authentication like fingerprint scanning – in addition to room keys – to access their rooms². This demonstrates how MFA can help you create secure and predictably awesome experiences for everyone in your organization.

Meanwhile, MFA is a versatile tool for your hospitality business². With MFA, you can seamlessly protect a variety of applications and services throughout your hotel, motel, or resort, including cloud storage, email, and payment systems². This makes it a perfect security solution to implement across your property, or across every property in your portfolio if you run a hotel chain².

Finally, if you already have security solutions in place for your hotel, motel, or resort, you can easily integrate MFA with them². For example, if you currently use firewalls (like the next-generation ones from Sophos we mentioned in another article) and intrusion detection systems, you can add MFA to create a comprehensive security suite². By incorporating MFA into your cybersecurity arsenal, you can identify, detect, and prevent threats to your hospitality business’s security before they can wreak havoc on the organization². In conclusion, MFA is an investment well worth making for hotels, motels, and resorts like yours.

If you are a hotel, motel, or resort seeking to implement MFA across your digital platforms, navitend can help. We offer MFA deployments for clients throughout New Jersey, New York, and eastern Pennsylvania. Our top priority is keeping your business’s applications, data, devices, and networks secure, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Navitend can help you. Call 973.448.0070 or setup an appointment today.

Sources:

¹HotelTechReport. “The Ultimate Guide to Hospitality Technology (2024)” by Jordan Hollander. Retrieved from https://hoteltechreport.com/news/hospitality-technology.

²Medium. “How Multi-Factor Authentication Can Protect the Hospitality Industry” by Phone Suite. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@phonesuites/how-multi-factor-authentication-can-protect-the-hospitality-industry.

³IBM Security. “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023.” Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/E3G5JMBP.

⁴CSO Online. “PCI DSS explained: Requirements, fines, and steps to compliance” by Josh Fruhlinger. Retrieved from https://www.csoonline.com/article/569591/pci-dss-explained-requirements-fines-and-steps-to-compliance.html.

Contact us at 973.448.0070

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