Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has announced that point of sale systems of a few hotels in North America were infected with malware, enabling unauthorized parties to access payment card information. After discovering the breach, Starwood ran an extensive investigation. At present time, there is no evidence that the company’s guest reservation or Starwood Preferred Guest membership systems were impacted. Customer information such as contact information or PINs were not affect, either. The impacted hotels have taken steps to secure card information, and the malware no longer presents a threat.
“Protecting our customers’ information is critically important to Starwood and we take this issue extremely seriously,” said Sergio Rivera, Starwood President, The Americas. “Quickly after we became aware of the possible issue, we took prompt action to determine the facts. We have been working closely with law enforcement authorities and have been coordinating our efforts with the payment card organizations. We want to assure our customers that we have implemented additional security measures to help prevent this type of crime from reoccurring.”
