Cyber Risk in Real Estate and Hospitality

Several studies have also shown that the primary target of cyber criminals in the hospitality sector is the financial assets of the everyday client assessed through credit card details, payer credentials, and other forms of PII. According to Verizon’s 2017 data breach study, almost all the attacks launched on the hospitality sector were financially motivated and executed by criminal groups, which have become more sophisticated and organized. Approximately 87 percent of breaches are targeted at Points of Sale (POS) devices; hence it is unsurprising that identity data theft has consistently been the most common breach type since 2013.

Real estate firms comprising construction and asset management, often consider themselves to be safe from cyber-attacks since they do not hold as much PII and PCI data as the other more consumer-facing industries. However, real estate firms also fall prey to several other sources of vulnerability (Exhibit 4). Moreover, as real estate firms adopt emerging technologies, PII and PCI data will increasingly come under the purview of real estate firms.

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