In a post pandemic world, the latest World Tourism Barometer owned by the UN World Tourism Organisation , signifies exceptional optimism for recovery in the immediate term, and a return to pre-pandemic tourism in the years to come.
During the various lockdown levels, and as borders and markets reopen, successful hospitality providers have been able to market themselves as offering safe and secure travel and ‘staycation’ alternatives. In many instances, this has included constantly adding new technologies and features to their networks in response to guest requirements, such as, but not limited to, secure and uncapped WiFi connectivity and contactless check-in options.
In the RevengeHotels campaign, different cybercriminal organisations using Remote Access Trojans to infect businesses in the hospitality sector. The main attack vector is emails with malicious document attachments. Each spear-phishing email is written with special attention to detail. Usually, the attack sees the hacker impersonating real people from legitimate companies making a fake booking request for a large group of people.
Fortunately, in a number of African countries, including South Africa and Nigeria, the experience of prevailing challenges with sustaining national grid power supply that leads to frequent bouts of continued loadshedding or rolling blackouts, most hotels and hospitality players have invested in alternative power supply options available in their markets to mitigate against the threat of the electricity grid going down.
“Cybersecurity solutions play a critical role in enabling businesses in the hotel and tourism sector to protect not only sensitive data, but infrastructure as well,” comments Bethwel Opil, enterprise client lead at Kaspersky in Africa. “However, hotels need flexible and user-friendly options to defend against attacks. This is also where employee training becomes essential.