Moving Target Defense Blog

The 2018 Starwood Hotels breach is only the latest in a long line of high profile intrusions that hotels have faced. It’s notable primarily for how many customer records were exposed — 500 million worldwide according to parent company Marriott — and that the breach wasn’t discovered for four years. This makes the breach a particularly extreme outlier according to Ponemon Institute research data. A recent Ponemon report found that it takes an average of 197 days to discover a breach, and an average of 69 days to close it.

Retailers aren’t the only ones who benefit from the holiday shopping season. Cyberattacks cost retailers more than $30 billion annually, and losses often mount during the highly profitable holiday season.