Vacation rental homeowners often adopt safety precautions to safeguard both themselves and their guests. Insurance, damage deposits, rental agreements, home regulations, and so on are examples of such safeguards.
What about the internal element of your vacation rental company if you’ve safeguarded it externally? We’re not referring to the interior of your home but rather to your computer. Have you ever considered how to secure your visitors’ data and your company online?
Whether it’s a booking or an inquiry, visitors provide you with personal information, which must be gathered securely. You have a duty as the owner of a vacation rental company to secure all visitor data. In addition to data security, you must also secure your system and apps.
First, we’ll look at some of the potential internet dangers out there and see what your company is up against:
1. Viruses
Malware is any program that is purposefully intended to cause damage to systems. Your device might get infected via a variety of means, including rogue networks and phishing emails. Malware that steals data is the most dangerous kind of malware for vacation rental owners or managers. Threat actors might utilize the data to demand a ransom from the owners in exchange for the safe return of their data.
2. Scams Based on Phishing
Spam is a kind of assault that is entirely based on deceit. They fool their victims by posing as a legitimate type of communication from a source they trust. Spam often results in negative consequences such as viruses, data and financial loss, and identity theft of an organization or a person. Spam is, in essence, the foundation of successful fraud.
3. Distributed Denial of Service Attack
A denial of service attack happens when a threat actor floods a system, such as a company website, with bogus requests, preventing legitimate users from accessing it. As a result, the victim suffers financial losses since genuine clients are denied access. This is often an assault on bigger firms or organizations with more traffic.
How can you safeguard your data and boost security?
Data protection is also required by law in most countries and is essential for every business, regardless of size. You must defend your company online and prevent any possible security dangers now that you are aware of the hazards.
Here are critical steps you should implement:
1. Install Antivirus Software
Anti-virus software is critical for protecting your devices against worms, viruses, and other types of malware. Aside from that, contemporary antiviruses are capable of monitoring odd system activity and may assist in determining whether the system has been infected.
Most malware will be prevented from infiltrating susceptible computers if antivirus and a firewall are installed. Updating the viral signatures on antivirus software regularly helps avoid assaults from even the most sophisticated viruses.
2. Construct a Firewall
A firewall is a physical or virtual barrier that protects against hackers, viruses, and other scams. It serves as your primary line of protection against internet dangers. The data that passes past this barrier is screened, evaluated, and controlled to prevent dangerous activities from entering your system. Potential Cyber Threats:
Last year, 62% of firms reported phishing emails and cyber intrusions. Because we live in the digital age, it is more vital than ever to be on the alert for and aware of cyber risks that might harm your organization.
Once you’ve established a firewall, it is important to keep it up to date since new threats emerge regularly. This will help safeguard your website from any new threats. Lodgify as a platform is secured by a cutting-edge firewall, and any websites built on it are protected by the same technology.
3. Use Secure Passwords
It is advised not to use the same password for all of your accounts and applications. Make your passwords special and one-of-a-kind. Make safe passwords by combining numbers, letters, lowercases, uppercases, and special characters.
Don’t create a single user with a single password for multi-user accounts. Create individual users so that you may restrict their access to just the sections you want them to utilize. And, of course, ensure that all users use unique passwords.
Extra Tip: Use a channel manager to keep track of all channels in one place.
4. Watch Out for Email Scams
If an email seems suspicious or you have concerns about the email itself, do not click on any links and immediately block the address. Whether it comes from a well-known organization or firm, contact them to determine if it was given by them or if it is a forgery.
Remember that no firm will contact you asking for your financial information these days. As a result, if you ever get an email requesting your credit card information, consider it spam.
A spam filter is a great tool for detecting and quarantining spam emails. Phishing training is essential for firms with a large number of workers to assist staff in learning how to recognize spam emails from legal ones.
Try this fast tip: look at the URL of any link delivered to you through email. The fraudster may have cloned the URL of another website and changed a letter. Check it against the actual URL on the site. If they vary, it is spam.
5. Provide a Safe Payment Method
Credit cards are one of the most secure payment options for vacation rental companies. Credit cards provide excellent fraud protection, and it is simple to get charges reversed. As a result, it is strongly recommended that you accept this payment method in your rental company.
Furthermore, it is the most popular payment option among visitors. The ability to pay by credit card allows visitors to keep their money secure and protect themselves from fraud.
6. Include SSL Encryption on your Website
Any online page with HTTPS in the URL, or SSL encryption, indicates that it is secure to use.
To keep consumer information private and safe, it’s becoming more vital to employ SSL encryption on any website that collects and sends data. It is so critical that Google stopped displaying websites without an SSL certificate in 2017.
This also serves as an additional security safeguard for visitors, as they will feel more at ease when making an online payment or booking via your website. They will be certain that their personal information will not fall into the wrong hands. Adding an SSL certificate to your website will help boost its SEO.
7. Maintain Strict Privacy Policies
Make it as clear to your guests as possible how you plan to use their personal information: why are you collecting their data and for what purpose. Provide a stringent privacy policy on your website and provide a permission box that visitors must check to indicate their agreement. If you want to send marketing emails, provide a permission form as well.
It is critical to inform customers that their information will not be shared with third-party firms. Similarly, do not request more information than you need. If anything were to go wrong, the more information you have on your system, the bigger the harm may be.
Furthermore, offering a privacy policy can instill confidence and trust in your visitors when they reserve your property.
Why is data security so critical?
Data theft and sale on the dark web are becoming more widespread. As a result, when it comes to managing personal data, all organizations must exercise more vigilance. Any data breach may result in hefty penalties and legal ramifications.
