Simon Chassar, CRO of Claroty commented: "Ransomware attacks on Point of Sale (POS) platforms can have disastrous impacts on the hospitality industry, pioneering to service downtime and long-term disruption."
He adds, "Research shows that 51% of the food and beverage sector reported substantial disruption when hit by a ransomware attack in 2021. Moreover, these attacks can cause significant financial losses for organisations, with more than a third stating that the revenue impact of operational disruption would be at least one million dollars per hour."
Cyber-physical systems
Simon Chassar continues, "As the hospitality industry continues to connect more cyber-physical systems such as POS and IoT devices to their networks; such as smart buildings heating, power and lighting, CCTV etc., organisations expose themselves to new cyber threats and vulnerabilities, which can lead to costly operational downtime. With the hospitality sector still recovering from COVID-19, a ransomware attack could be financially devastating. Therefore, it is crucial that organisations implement proactive strategies to secure their cyber-physical systems."
He concludes, "Businesses must have visibility across their entire network for all assets connected to understand their risk posture and provide patches to critical assets such as operational technology (OT) and IoT devices. It is also essential to segment their networks to restrict unnecessary connectivity and the movement of malware to mitigate the impact of cyberattacks."