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Is Your Data Secure?
By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor
If confidential data resides on an on-site meeting network or in a registration database, it's the planner's responsibility to protect it. Here are security best practices from a technical perspective.
Rampant identity theft and credit card fraud have raised awareness that personal information must be protected. But as fast as changing technology provides new ways to share data — from secure wireless networks to voice-over-Internet cell phones — hackers devise new ways to gain unauthorized access. If you think these issues are a concern only for your IT department, think again.
“The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has created a duty of care for anyone with access to data to take measures to keep it confidential,” says Joshua Grimes of Grimes Law Offices LLC, a Philadelphia law firm serving hospitality professionals and associations. “Under SOX, they have a responsibility to protect data, and that responsibility spreads to outside meeting planners and hotels.”
Failure to protect personal information can have serious repercussions, from fines and penalties levied by credit card companies to lawsuits and damaged reputations. Last year, 53 million people had personal data exposed, and 8.9 million adults were victims of identity fraud, according to Information Week magazine. The hospitality industry is not immune. Marriott International's data loss incident late last year, affecting 206,000 customers, ranked among the top 10 disclosures tracked by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. And Hotels.com reported in June that 243,000 customers' personal information had been potentially compromised when a laptop computer was stolen from its auditing company.
To minimize risk and liability, meeting professionals need high standards of due diligence. Grimes advises taking a “virtual walk-through” of your network to anticipate how data can get out and to make sure that you have taken all reasonable measures to protect it.
Excerpt from "Is Your Data Secure?" Corporate Meetings & Incentives, July 1, 2006. Copyright 2006 Prism Business Media, The Meetings Group, Stowe, MA.
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