Marriott International (MAR) stock is falling as the company had been hit by its worst customer data breach.
Marriott International Inc (NASDAQ: MAR) stock price is down 6.76% after falling 5% in the pre-market. It happened after the company announced on Tuesday it had suffered a massive data breach. The American multinational diversified hospitality company is well known for managing the different line of hotels and lodging facilities.
At the time of writing, Marriott (MAR) stock is trading at $69.75. The company’s market cap is 22.61 billion.
Marriott Get Hacked
According to the company, hackers were able to compromise sensitive information of almost 5.2 million people.
However, the hack was not as devastating as compared to 2018 one, which ended up with almost 500 million customers’ info stolen from its database. The hack is said to have taken place after the hackers used two of the company’s employees to access guest information. It is however not certain if the two employees were in collaboration with the hackers or not.
Among the compromised information includes guest names, their email addresses, their home addresses, their phone numbers, their gender, their date of birth, their frequent filter numbers, their loyalty account information, and finally their hotel preference.
Hackers are after these sorts of huge attack to get access to a database containing information that is valuable to cybercriminals in the dark web.
Dark web markets have been evolving since the inception of the cryptocurrencies, making policing cybercriminals a difficult task for law enforcement. Mostly, such attacks end up with cybercriminals asking for huge ransoms from their victims, whereby they threaten to disclose the magnitude of the attack and the information to the public.
The company reported that it noticed suspicious activities by the end of February. It immediately disabled the credentials and began an investigation on the matter. In order to ensure the security of the customers’ info, the company contacted the affected guest, asking them to stay alert.
Effect of the Hack on Marriott Stock Value and Business
The company is ranked the third largest in its line of business in the world, with 30 brands with over 7,000 properties across over 130 countries. As of March 2019, the company was operating on over 1.3 million rooms. Such figures elaborate on the magnitude of the workload the company deals with daily.
The company business has been affected by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has pushed people to stay at home. Combined with the recent attack, it is not all well with the company’s stock market and business operation.
Its stock price has been shedding at an alarming rate in the past months, and now combined with the attack. It might be a huge catalyst for its downfall. However, since it recovered from the 2018 attack, there are hopes it will recover from the attack.
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