What’s In Store for Hospitality Businesses in the Future?
As businesses look to the future – and grab new opportunities – they’re excited to introduce technologies in ways they’ve never even thought of. But what does this mean in terms of risk?
It’s no secret that the hospitality industry has undergone a difficult period over the past few years. But as we begin to emerge on the other side, this is also a period of excitement and anticipation.
Guest demands and expectations are shifting. And this means that hotels, restaurants, and other hospitality businesses are being presented with opportunities to innovate, transform, and embrace a whole new landscape. COVID-19 has reset the industry, and we’re facing a future full of possibilities.
But at the same time, we’re also facing new challenges. Consumers may be reluctant to return to their old habits, for example. And it’s estimated that between 5-10% of business travel may never come back. But perhaps one of the biggest challenges that lies ahead is cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity and the future of hospitality
As businesses look to the future – and grab new opportunities – they’re excited to introduce technologies in ways they’d never even thought of before. But what does this mean in terms of risk?
In general, it means that risk will be likely to increase. There’s certainly a lot to be excited about in the future of hospitality. But there’s plenty that business leaders need to be wary about, too.
Now that businesses are implementing more systems, using more software, and expanding their networks, here are three things that could be lurking just around the corner:
1. A growing number of threats
Equality in education is finally showing signs of improving, all around the world. That is, of course, excellent news. The problem is that opportunities are not increasing at the same rate as the quality of global education. Experts are voicing concerns that, if the number of skilled people increases, but job opportunities remain stagnant, there could be an explosion of new, sophisticated attack scripts emerging as more and more people put their tech skills ‘to good use’ by turning to cybercrime.
2. Reduced resilience
In this fast-paced digital era, developers are actively striving to launch the most comprehensive, most intuitive, most valuable software solutions imaginable. Today, the opportunities are endless. And we anticipate that, over the next few years, the number of older systems being left unsupported will grow massively. For any hospitality business still relying on legacy systems, this could spark a major disaster, with vulnerable software reducing resilience. If ever there was a time to change, it’s now.
3. Shortened attack lifecycles
Right now, the average cyber attack lasts for weeks. This is how long it takes to plan, implement, and source data from an attack. This is good news for businesses. It means that if they can detect the earliest signs of an attack, they can reduce its impact. However, with attackers using more advanced tools, including AI, machine learning, and automation, the attack lifecycle could shorten significantly. McKinsey estimates that the lifecycle could be expedited ‘from weeks to days or even hours’.
Predicting the future
The truth is that we can’t predict what’s going to happen. We don’t know that there will be more threats. We don’t know that businesses will keep relying on unsupported legacy systems. We don’t know if the attack lifecycle will be reduced. All we know for certain is that cybercrime will grow.
Hackers will likely always seek out the weakest link in a hospitality business. And today, that weakest link is the internal network, which is the access point for 64% of hospitality attacks. Therefore, to prepare for what’s to come, we recommend starting with strengthening your internal network to lessen the risk. At Reliable Networks, we’re here to help you build a stronger network that places you in a good position for handling whatever the future has in store. Get in touch with us for more information.
