The Personal Data Privacy & Security Act: Are you Ready?

Here is my forth entry.

Name of the author: Rick Warner
Title of the article: “The Personal Data Privacy & Security Act: Are you Ready?”
Magazine name: Hospitality Upgrade
Issue: 10/26/2006
URL of the article: http://www.hospitalityupgrade.com/_magazine/magazine_Detail.asp?ID=50


Summary:

This article focuses on the data privacy and security issue in the hospitality industry. By the rapid development of the internet, the numbers of high-visibility customer data thefts and losses have occurred. For this reason, Congress plans to enact a protective legislation called “Personal Data Privacy and Security Act”, which is intended to assist consumers to better protect the privacy of their personal information in the face of recurrent data security breaches across the country. There are seven key areas of the legislation. One of the key features which the author mentioned is to ensure that any business engaging in interstate commerce that involves collecting, accessing, transmitting, using, storing or disposing of “personally identifiable” information in electronic or digital form on 10,000 or more U.S. persons to apply strict data privacy and security safeguards. The civil penalties are up to $5,000 per violation per day. Then the author further suggested two steps to prevent an incident occurred or be attacked. The first step is to conduct a compliance assessment, which is a gap analysis for the organization. After that, the companies can develop a custom program to address all seven of the key areas of focus set forth in the legislation.


My Reflection:

I totally agree with the author. I think that it is the time to think about the data privacy and security issue to keep pace with the rapid development of technology. Hackers are everywhere. They are tricky and always seeking new ways to steal the customer data. You might be attacked several times without realized it. Therefore, the protective legislation is definitely a must. Once this legislation pass into law, it will impact the way that customer data will be handled going forward, especially for hotel chains and large independent operators, which store a lot of personally identifiable information such as credit card numbers. Therefore, they need to document and maintain all data security procedures in order to better protect the guest information. However, to effective restrain the hackers, only the legislation is not enough. Besides this, there are two other important exposures which the author stated. First, individual consumers can initiate civil lawsuits which can involve large penalties if lost or stolen customer data ultimately results in the theft of their identity. Second, the companies can look for the help by the national media which can release the news of any customer data loss. With all these method, the companies can at least minimize the risk of being attack to protect the data security.

Feeling Lucky?

Here is my third entry.

Name of the author: Jon Inge
Title of the article: “Feeling Lucky?”
Magazine name: Hospitality Upgrade
Issue: 13/3/2007
URL of the article: http://www.hospitalityupgrade.com/_magazine/magazine_Detail.asp?ID=78


Summary:

This article focuses on the gaming technology in casino hotels. It takes a look at two main aspects. First introduces the gaming systems in use at many casinos today. Then it further explains the extra demands typical hotel systems must satisfy when installed in a casino hotel. In the gaming technology, they use the slot management interconnecting and electronically monitoring the individual slot or video console play. The network of machines not only allow management to collect player and machine statistics, but also letting guests to customize the default games displayed on the machines. For the group-play table games, they offer RFID chips and coded cards. Through instantly scanning and recording against the player ID card and optical tracking the invisible bar code stripes on the edge of the chips, they can prevent the use of counterfeit tokens and enhance the CRM and security value of all the data recorded. In the aspect of hotel systems, three significant factors are specific gaming related functionality like handling complimentary accounting, a much higher degree of integration between different systems such as linking the player’s standing with CRM and PMS, and the sheer scale of the operation, which means the capability of handling massive traffic volumes with quick response times.


My Reflection:

After reading this article, I truly believe that casino operators put a lot of effort to make the customers feeling lucky. The casino offers the customers with wide-screen displays, touch screens function, customize displayed, comfortable booth-style seating, easily accessing a wide range of information in the machine and so on. The only purpose of all of these features is keeping the player involved for as long as possible. However, the gaming operators are never satisfied. They think that the casino itself is not enough. Nowadays, casinos even rent or lease different kinds of remotely hosted games from vendors on a software-as-a service basis, downloaded to networked generic consoles. Obviously, this flexibility is definitely attracting the customers. Another important element which makes me impressive is sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) tool. I totally agree that this is a key to modern casino profitability. Through detailed data collection of individual player statistics, the gaming operators know their valuable client’s playing habits and preferences very well. With the data analysis, casinos can even arrange the machines and games that were most popular with each type of player. In my opinion, although there is a lot of advanced technology applying to the casino, we cannot blindly rely on technology without thinking. Remain observation of the human behavior is necessary indeed.