Marriott agrees to pay $52 million settlement over data breaches

Marriott agreed to pay $52 million settlement to 49 states and Washington, DC over a series of data breaches that occurred between 2014 and 2020, affecting more than 334 million customers. As part of a separate agreement, the Federal Trade Commission is also requiring Marriott and its subsidiary, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, to implement an information security program to settle charges over the data breaches. 

“Marriott’s poor security practices led to multiple breaches affecting hundreds of millions of customers,” Samuel Levine, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. “The FTC’s action today, in coordination with our state partners, will ensure that Marriott improves its data security practices in hotels around the globe.”

The FTC says Marriott and Starwood, which it acquired in 2016, deceived customers by claiming to have reasonable and appropriate data security, but instead left them vulnerable to breaches. The FTC’s complaint alleges that Marriott failed to implement appropriate password controls, firewall controls, or network segmentation. The company failed to patch outdated software and systems, and didn’t deploy multi-factor authentication, according to the FTC.

In one incident, discovered in 2020, hackers stole approximately 20GB of employee and customer data from the BWI Airport Marriott in Baltimore, Maryland. The data included confidential business documents and customer payment information, including credit card authorization forms.

As part of the settlement, Marriott has agreed to give all US customers a way to request that any personal information associated with their email addresses or loyalty rewards account number be deleted. According to the FTC, customers’ passport information, debit and credit card numbers, dates of birth, email addresses, loyalty numbers, and other information were exposed in the breaches. Marriott is also required to review rewards accounts and restore customers’ stolen rewards points upon request.