The recently discovered Marriott Hotel data breach is one of the largest data thefts ever. The numbers involved are staggering. Hackers stole records from 500 million hotel customers who stayed in Marriott-owned, Starwood brand properties. It's probably the second-largest data breach in history, topped only by the time hackers got access to 3 billion Yahoo accounts.
As if that weren't bad enough, what makes the Marriott breach even worse is that it had been going on for four years before being discovered.
Marriott said it first received an alert there was a problem on September 8, 2018. At first, investigators didn't know what part of the system had been hacked, but by November 19, they figured out it was the Starwood reservation database and that customer information had been breached since 2014. An as yet unidentified "unauthorized party" had gotten into the system, copied and encrypted customer information, and taken "steps towards removing it."
Who Is Affected by the Marriott Breach?
Anyone who made a reservation at a Starwood property on or before September 10, 2018, might have had their information stolen. There are many large hotel chains under the Starwood properties umbrella, including Sheraton, Westin, St. Regis, and W hotels and Starwood timeshares. The breach, however, does not appear to have affected hotels bearing the Marriott name, which use a different data system than the Starwood hotels.
What Information Was Stolen?
According to Marriott, 327 million customers had information stolen that may include their names, mailing and email addresses, passport numbers, phone numbers, dates of birth, gender, and details about their reservations.
Among those 327 million customers, an unknown number also had their payment card numbers and expiration dates stolen. The card numbers were encrypted, but Marriott said it had "not been able to rule out" that the information needed to break the encryption was also stolen. That's hardly reassuring.
The rest of the people whose records were breached had names and sometimes other information, such as their addresses, stolen.
A Terrible Trend
Unfortunately, large data breaches are becoming common. Earlier this year, 150 million MyFitnessPal accounts were breached. Last year's Equifax breach affected 143 million people. In just the last few months, customer and user information was breached at Facebook, T-Mobile, and Macy's. This is a horrific trend that affects everyone.
You Can Provide Peace of Mind
There is a pressing need for products that protect people's personal data from this onslaught of breaches. Enfortra is partnering with financial institutions to provide white label credit report services as part of their suite of white label identity protection products. Your company can sponsor this program, and it will be branded with your company's name.
How White Label Identity Protection Works
When you offer Enfortra's white label monitoring services to your clients and members, you give them the peace of mind they crave. You can customize the suite of services you offer, with options including a white label credit report, dark web monitoring, and identity theft insurance.
Providing Enfortra's white label monitoring under your company's brand is a proven way to attract new customers, increase customer loyalty, and grow revenues.