It's no longer James Bond

ITB Hospitality Day 2014: Keynote warns hotel sector about data attacks


"A hotel isn't a secure room", the KPMG expert warned, key note speaker at the "ITB Hospitality Day" Berlin.

Berlin (April 4, 2014). "We are no longer watching James Bond, it's really happening!" Uwe Bernd-Striebeck, partner of the auditing company KPMG, made it unmistakably clear to his audience that in a world of WiFi, both people and companies are increasingly open to systematic data attacks and espionage. The keynote speaker at the 9th "ITB Hospitality Day" issued a wake-up call. In a very clear speech, he described what networking means today and how hotels are affected by this.

Uwe Bernd-Striebeck is part of a specialist division of KPMG which focuses on firewalls and spy-defence as well as on the protection of critical infrastructure. The encryption and decryption of data and the analysis of risk scenarios are therefore all part of his everyday work. He has nothing against the collection of data by his provider per se, but what if his data are suddenly sold on a CD - completely dissolved from any specific connection. Even make a detour to visit your grandmother could be wrongly interpreted, for instance... US airlines that hold passengers for longer exclusively on the basis of their Arabic-sounding name provide a concrete travel example here.

He warned the hotel sector here too: Data attacks occur in the hotel room through guest laptops. "Malware" included on chips incorporated into coffee machines and irons then log into the computer via WiFi and spy out, that is, steal, their data. This has already happened in various US hotels, and in Sochi smartphones were reportedly infected with malware in cafes


Bernd-Striebeck: maintain control of your own data.

Monitoring guests is reality

The world has woken up since the British secret service, GCHQ, monitored 350 high-calibre guests and instructed its staff to plan for "special technical attacks" for particular guests... The German magazine "Spiegel" discovered this monitoring for diplomats at the end of 2012. "This all happens several hundred times each day," the data expert commented. And there are, of course, still the real spies.

"A hotel isn't a secure room" the KPMG expert warned. The first executives of DAX companies are already beginning to avoid meetings in hotel conference rooms and are choosing the smallest bed & breakfasts, which are guaranteed not to be bugged, instead. "It is time that the tourism industry accepts this threat and reacts!" Bernd Striebeck demands. "The issue is often still ignored by the tourism sector."

A paradigm shift is currently taking place in corporate security. Whereas firewalls have in the past been built around companies, and these should also be maintained in future, additional data linkage software must now also be included... "It's important now to recognise attacks within the internal network," the keynote speaker said.

Hackers - from one's own firm - often steal only small data packages. This is often not noticed for months, though can result in enormous damage.

Identify your leaks

For him, events of the recent past show that it is important not only to rely on software from other countries (US), but rather that Europe should again develop its own software and maintain control of its own data.

In particular, he recommends the following points to every company:

√ Identifizieren Sie Ihre "Kronjuwelen" aus Datensicht im Unternehmen!
√ Checken Sie, wo diese Daten vorkommen, auf welchen Systemen sie liegen.
√ Steht der Drucker beispielsweise in einem sicheren Bereich?
√ Checken Sie, welche Schutzvorkehrungen Sie überhaupt in diesen Bereichen bisher getroffen haben und ob diese ausreichend sind!

Der Titel der Keynote der diesjährigen ITB-Hotelkonferenz "You can check out any time you like, but your data can never leave" hatte die Erfahrungen des IT- und Daten-Experten auf den Punkt gebracht. / map

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