Penalty against Marriott hotel chain
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, or ICO, has announced that a fine of £99.2 million will be imposed on international hotel chain Marriott. This amount corresponds to approximately 110 million euros.
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In 2016, the Marriott bought Starwood Hotels & Resports Worldwide for a colocated $12 billion. The company was incorporated into the chain.
In November 2018, it was revealed that cybercriminals had captured customer data of approximately 339 million customers. The data was stolen from a Starwood Hotels database. About 30 million data records of EU citizens were affected. If no data had been stolen from EU guarantors, the General Data Protection Regulation would not have applied because the company is located in the USA.
In addition to data on overnight stays, credit card data was also stolen.
Determination of the authority
The DPA’s ICO staff says the Marriott hotel chain did not adequately test security systems as part of the acquisition. Therefore, the company is guilty of not having adequately protected your customers’ data.
At the same time, it was emphasized that the company has cooperated with the authorities and has taken various measures to prevent such theft in the future.
Nevertheless, ICO announced to impose a fine of 99 million British pounds. The Marriott hotel chain still has the opportunity to write a statement before the decision becomes legally binding.
Because the hotel industry is heavily impacted by Covid-19, the penalty amount was reduced from 110 million euros to 20.4 million euros.
Entscheidungsdatum:
30.10.2020
Land:
Great Britain
Art des Verstoßes:
Theft of Data
Betroffene Datensätze:
20347230
Waren sensible Daten betroffen?:
No
verhängte Geldstrafe:
€ 20,347,230,-
Violation of GDPR Paragraph:
32. Security of processing
Quelle:
Communication from the UK data protection authority ICO (English)