Hacking hotels

According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, more credit card information is being stolen from hotels than from any other industry. This probably explains why Marriott is now involved in ASC X9F, the group that writes information security standards for the American financial services industry.

I wasn't quite sure why Marriott decided to get involved in security standards. Few users of security technology do. Most just leave it to security vendors to figure out how things ought to work. In light of the recent WSJ article, Marriott's participation in X9F makes a lot more sense. Other users ought to follow their lead in this area and make sure that their voices are heard.

If you don't get involved in the definition of standards then you shouldn't complain about them once they're done.