With a backdrop of headlines including the hacked credit card terminal at a national restaurant chain with multiple Tri-State locations to POS systems being infected with malware, HUB International teamed with Ellenoff Grossman and Schole, NYSRA and TFS last month to find solutions to the latest threat to the local restaurant community.
A panel of experts led by Kathleen Riley of NYSRA’s New York City office, the HUB International’s duo of Bob Fiorito and Maribeth Anderson, Jennifer Silverman and Amanda Fugazy of Ellenoff Grossman and Schole, and moderated by Fred Klashman of Total Food Service hosted a fast moving informative hospitality industry breakfast seminar on cybersecurity strategies titled “WHY YOUR HOSPITALITY BUSINESS IS A POTENTIAL TARGET FOR CYBER CRIME” at HUB International’s New York City office.
The panel of representatives from many of the City’s leading restaurant groups met to discuss and share solutions for every flavor of data hacking including the very latest: Social Engineering Fraud. Many of the actual examples were nothing short of eye opening. They included a recent insurance payout as a result of a well orchestrated $80K plus wiring of funds from a phony request of a restaurant chain’s CFO.
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Ellenoff’s Silverman who has emerged as a key industry voice on “privacy” spoke of the need for immediate transparency as the result of a breach. Anderson of HUB who is based in the firm’s Chicago office spoke of the importance of creating and protecting strong passwords. “A smart operator needs to embrace on an on-going strategy to change passwords. In many cases the first step is avoid the use of obvious passwords including birthdays.”
The group spoke at length over the pros and cons of adopting “pay at the table” with credit cards with chips. “Sure, it’s popular in Europe, but frankly it doesn’t reflect the culture of high end hospitality in a major city like New York,” noted HUB’s long time restaurant guru Fiorito.
The session also brought focus on the challenge of meeting PCI Data Security standards. “With a 100 plus pages of rules and regulations, our suggestion is on-going training that takes the key operating points in PCI and gets everybody on your team comfortable with the priorities,” Anderson added.
Among restaurant management in attendance was Geoff Gordon of Havana Central. He brought key input into implementation of cybersecurity strategies with his discussion of growing from a single unit to multiple units. “Our approach has been to think big and execute small. As we have grown, we have built firewalls that severely limit access by our personnel to work on anything other than data that directly impacts their end of the operation.”
One of the key takeaways is that even with the enormous threat that cybersecurity has created, solid planning and strategies creates any need for extensive additional expense. “Most of the policies we write include cybersecurity ideas to protect our restaurant clients,” HUB’s Fiorito concluded.
The session was the latest in a quarterly series at HUB’s Midtown headquarters that has become a must-attend for restaurant and foodservice professionals.
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