Anyone Surprised to Hear 1.5M Hotel Customers’ Data was Stolen?

BankInfoSecurity.com reported that “Hospitality giant Indian Hotels said it's probing the alleged theft of sensitive data from its systems after a criminal claimed to have stolen data pertaining to 1.5 million customers.”  The November 24, 2023 report entitled “Indian Hotels Probes Alleged Customer Data Breach” (https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/indian-hotels-probes-alleged-customer-data-breach-a-23687?rf=2023-11-27_ENEWS_SUB_BIS__Slot1_ART23687&mkt_tok=MDUxLVpYSS0yMzcAAAGPsIVP_eqUjGouubODdT5r8DjwgT471B0YThRmNSqyB3-BMZiLaRRjivUCRnVrgE9MW3fea7yzDHEnVwXkSk1EVtQI3VNYOxjM0oV63fddwmqKEtZOCw) included these comments:

The criminal, who uses the moniker "dnacookes," recently announced the theft in a post to the English-language cybercrime forum BreachForums. They claim they stole the data in 2020 and that it includes personal details, including name, email address, phone number, birthdate and address, for 1.5 million customers of the high-end Taj Hotels chain from 2014 through 2020.

Owned by Indian Hotels - aka IHCL - Taj properties include The Pierre in New York, and in India, the Taj Lake Palace in Udaipur and the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai.

Indian Hotels Company runs 263 hotels under not just the Taj but also the SeleQtions, Vivanta and Ginger brand names. The business reported $359 million in revenue for the first half of this year, up 18% for the same time last year.

This is very unsettling news, what do you think?