UPDATED 18:29 EDT / MAY 22 2020

SECURITY

Wyndham relies on Zscaler for tighter cybersecurity as hotels gear up for hands-off experience

The hospitality industry has been heavily impacted by the global pandemic. As of mid-May, seven out of 10 hotel rooms were empty across the U.S., and hotels have already lost more than $25 billion in revenue.

When recovery begins, it is likely that guests will demand a wholly different experience, and that will take technology to make it happen.

“When you check into a hotel, you’re going to want that to be as contactless an experience as possible,” said Scott Strickland (pictured), executive vice president and chief information officer of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts Inc. “How do we offer the technology at scale to our guests and franchisees to enable that? That’s keyless entry, that’s mobile payments, that’s the ability to choose my room, perhaps on my mobile device. There’s a whole new world that’s coming.”

Strickland spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, as part of the Zscaler Digital Transformation series. They discussed the impact of Wyndham’s cloud-first security approach and the importance of endpoint protection for traveling employees. (* Disclosure below.)

Focus on major threats

Greater reliance on technology for even the most basic hotel services will also increase threats to cybersecurity. Wyndham partners with Zscaler Inc. for a “cloud-first” solution that delivers protection via inline proxy. This has led Strickland and his team to be less worried about traditional threats, such as DDoS attacks or SQL injections.

“By automating it and putting it into the cloud, we’re not worried about most of that anymore,” Strickland said. “We can really focus now on state-sponsored agencies or the criminal agencies that are coming after us with very sophisticated phishing or email attacks.”

Working in the hospitality industry often means travel for hotel employees. Wyndham relies on Zscaler’s endpoint protection to guard against attacks that could be generated through remote connectivity.

“We can connect with confidence from a Starbucks or any coffee shop in the world because we know we have Zscaler installed on the endpoint,” Strickland said. “We know it’s going through a level of scrutiny and we’ll have that protection, so even if the network is being sniffed, we’ll be protected.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: Zscaler Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Zscaler nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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