Starwood, the luxury hotel group that owns and operates dozens of properties across the globe, has confirmed that 54 of its properties were caught in a malware attack designed to harvest credit and debit card information from cash registers and payment terminals. The malware was found spread across the Sheraton, West and W properties in the United States and Canada. The group believes that these properties were infected from as early as November 2014 to June 30th 2015.
Starwood claims that highly sensitive information like customer addresses, reward card information and reservation data were not compromised in this breach. However it does believe that data stolen may include names of customers, credit card numbers, card security codes and expiration dates.
The group is now advising customers who have visited any of the 54 properties during this time period to keep an eye on their payment card activity and report any suspicious charges to their bank. Starwood has said that it will provide one year of free identity protection and credit monitoring services to customers affected by this data breach.
Starwood also said in its statement that it hired a team to isolate the remove the malware from the system, and that additional safeguards have now been implemented to ensure that a similar attack does not take place in the future.
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