Kent Hotel Involved In Data Breach

KENT, OH - InterContinental Hotels Group, a parent company of Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza and Candlewood Suites and other hotels has announced that more than 1,000 of its locations may have been subject to a breach of customer credit card information between Sept. 29, 2016, and Dec. 29.

Among the hotels that were compromised in the breach are dozens in the Northeast Ohio region, including the Holiday Inn Express in Kent, 1215 Sanctuary View Dr. If you stayed at the hotel between Sept. 29, 2016 and October 18, 2016, your card information may have been compromised.

The conglomerate discovered malware on its credit card processing systems tracked data from customers transactions, including guests' names, credit card numbers, expiration dates and internal verification code. Customers who believe they may have been affected should check their credit card statements for unusual activity or fraudulent purchases.

IHG hired a cybersecurity firm to investigate the incident. While malware was not removed from the hotels' systems until the investigation in February and March of 2017, the group have found no evidence that any breaches occurred at Dec. 29. The group's hotels had begun moving to use Secure Payment Solutions, a program that encrypts customer credit card information, before the incident began.

According to Krebs on Security, a cyber security blogger, the IHG's list of affected hotels include 1,175 locations out of 5,000 worldwide.

If you've been a customer at one of the group's hotels during that time period and believe your credit card information might have been stolen, IHG has posted an easily searchable list of compromised hotels and the timeframes during which the information was vulnerable.

If you have questions, and reside in the United States, please call 855-330-6367 from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET, Monday to Friday.

Photo credit: Gryffindor
Story written by Cody Fenwick, Patch