Hyatt Hotels Gets Cyber Intruder…Again

Hyatt, the hotel operator, is alerting its customers that it was hit with a credit card breach, marking the second big breach in a few years.

According to a news report, Hyatt said its security staff found signs that there was unauthorized access to payment card information from those that were manually entered or swiped at check-in at the front desk. It happened in Hyatt-managed hotels between March 18 and July 2 of this year, said the report.

“Upon discovery, we launched a comprehensive investigation to understand what happened and how this occurred, which included engaging leading third-party experts, payment card networks and authorities,” the company said in a statement. “Hyatt’s layers of defense and other cybersecurity measures helped to identify and resolve the issue … this incident affects a small percentage of total payment cards used at the affected hotels during the at-risk dates.”

The data breach impacted payment card data that included the cardholder’s name, card number, expiration data and verification code. There are no signs that other personal information was compromised, noted the report.

At the end of 2015, the hotel operator revealed that hackers had been gaining access to the company’s credit card system for roughly four months, impacting properties in 50 different countries. In this most recent breach, the cyberattack appears to have touched 41 hotels in 11 countries, noted the report. Some of the hotels are in the U.S. and Hawaii, with one in Guam and one in Puerto Rico. China had the most properties impacted by the data breach, coming in at 18.

The data breach on the part of Hyatt comes as consumers in America are on high alert after a massive data breach at the credit scoring company Equifax. In that case, the data on 145.5 million customers was compromised, as well as the credit card information of 209,000 consumers.