September 28, 2022
More than half (56%) of hospitality IT leaders rank cybersecurity as one of the top three business concerns for their C-suite, ahead of inflation (52%), retention and recruitment (48%) and supply Chain/Logistics Management (50%), according to hotel/tourism professionals in a new survey of global IT professionals. The research was commissioned by Rackspace Technology, a multi-cloud technology solutions provider, and conducted by Coleman Parkes Research.
According to the study, less than half (37%) of hospitality professionals say they are fully prepared to deal with cybersecurity attacks and threats. Most hotel/tourism IT executives say they are either unprepared or “slightly prepared” to respond to significant threats, such as identifying and mitigating threats and areas of concern (60%), recovering from cyberattacks (65%) Or prevent mistakes and violations (59%).
Other key findings:
- More than half (56%) mentioned operational downtime and 46% reported loss of intellectual property/data, not to mention damaged brand reputation (50%) and lost revenue (31%).
- More than half (69%) said the frequency and severity of cybersecurity attacks were seasonal, peaking at the beginning of the year and then tapering off over a 12-month period.
- 72% of hospitality/tourism organizations say board visibility into cybersecurity has increased over the past five years, while 74% say it has increased due to better collaboration between security teams and C-suite members investment in cybersecurity.
When asked about the top three cybersecurity challenges their organizations face, migrating and operating applications to the cloud leads (44%), followed by a lack of workers with cybersecurity skills (40%), and a lack of visibility into vulnerabilities Sexuality covers all infrastructure (37%).
Despite the economic challenges posed by the pandemic, organizations show no signs of reducing their investment in cybersecurity, with 69% of hotel/tourism organizations reporting that their cybersecurity budgets have increased over the past three years.
The top recipients of this new investment are cloud-native security (55%), data security (43%), consulting security services (43%) and application security (40%). Cloud-native security is also an area where organizations are most likely to rely on external partners for expertise, according to the survey.
These investments are closely related to the areas where hospitality/tourism organizations see the greatest concentration of threats, led by cybersecurity (58%), followed by web application attacks (55%) and cloud architecture attacks (50%).