Like any other industry, restaurants are prone to cyber security attacks. A typical restaurant witnesses a large number of credit card transactions regularly from its customers. Additionally, with limited protection in place, the restaurant business often becomes a soft target for hackers. In a restaurant, a cyber-attack is most likely to seek any of the following details.
- Personal information about your staff and customers
- Credit card information of your customers
- Bank account information and business details of the restaurant
Compromising personal data of your staff and customers can be detrimental to your restaurant’s reputation. This breach of trust can also result in decreasing your restaurant’s foot traffic. As a restaurant owner, it is your responsibility to provide a safe and rewarding dining experience that instills trust and prompts your customers to visit repeatedly. In your restaurant, the following four areas are most vulnerable to cyber crimes.
- Online Banking
- Point-of-Sale System (POS)
- Internal Network
- Online Sales
Things to Know about Cyber Security for Restaurant
With due diligence and proactiveness, you can secure your establishment with affordable IT infrastructure. Read on to know how you can protect your customer’s information from cyber threats and create a safe environment for them.
1. Educate Restaurant Management about Cyber Security
If properly trained, your staff can be your most reliable and helpful defense mechanism against cyber-attacks. By educating your management about the importance of cyber security for restaurant, they can help in developing long-term and successful business associations. Such awareness helps them in avoiding suspicious websites and deleting phishing mails on your restaurant’s computers. These intuitive yet efficient practices create a human firewall against cyber-attacks. These strategies help in creating a secure environment in your restaurant to stay ahead of cyber-threats.
As technology keeps on evolving, defending data keeps becoming more difficult than ever, and your management must update accordingly. After all, while sitting in the restaurant booth, the last thing you would want your customer to worry about is the theft of his credit card information.
2. Alert Employees for the Battle Against Cyber Threats
Apart from making your employees aware of the best practices of cyber security, general caution and vigilance can make your restaurant secure as well. Quite often, hackers pose as utility service repairers like electricians, network operators, computer operators, etc. While visiting your restaurant, they would request access to your restaurant’s servers/ computer systems to install malware. These programs automatically gather credit card information and other sensitive files from your restaurant’s systems.
Sometimes, you will have to make the necessary changes in your restaurant layout as well. For example, it is always advisable to keep the business computers and servers away from the customer’s view as it decreases the chances of any unauthorized access. If you train the staff in knowing what to look for, they can act as watchdogs. So, in addition to just waiting at the restaurant tables, they can contribute to creating a safe environment at your restaurant as well.
3. Investing in Secure POS Systems for Restaurants
Hackers, like any other thieves, look for vulnerable systems/places that require minimum effort to breach and provide substantial results. POS systems, used for payments at the restaurant barstools or chairs, continue to remain the weakest link of the chain of digital payments. Without much effort, cyber criminals can hack these systems to obtain the personal and financial information of your customers.
Investing in POS systems with EMV chip card readers can boost your restaurant’s digital security significantly. These updated POS systems adhere to the regulatory guidelines and use encrypted computer chips to secure and authenticate transactions performed through cards. The Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance is the industry benchmark to ensure that your restaurant accepts, processes, stores, and transmits the credit card information securely. In addition to providing an extra layer of security, PCI compliance build trust among your customers as well.
4. Utilizing Services of IT Professionals
After making your systems secure, investing in taking the services of a professional IT firm is another wise decision that pays in the longer run. Rather than managing the cyber security yourself, it makes sense to let the experts do it for you. With an expert and professional IT service provider, you get complete peace of mind about your restaurant’s digital security. You can manage the other aspects of your restaurant more confidently. From finding the best products to installing them, from updating the systems to providing on-call support, a competent IT firm can cater to all your needs.
5. Have a Communications Crisis Plan
Despite investing in the best systems and following the best practices, restaurants can still become a victim of a cyber-attack. Under such unfortunate events, apart from regulatory fines, the brand image of a restaurant also suffers significantly. While you hope for the best, it’s wise to prepare for the worst. Having a well-chalked out crisis plan helps in rebuilding your restaurant’s reputation and loyalty of your customers. Under these situations, transparent and effective communication to inform and assure your customers is key to resolving the issue. Having a dedicated crisis manager boosts the confidence of your customers that you are addressing the issue and working on the solution. Moreover, having a single point of communication prevents any leakage of sensitive information as well.
6. Building Trust Among Your Customers
The restaurant business, like any other hospitability industry, thrives on the trust of its customers. In case of a cyber-attack, rather than financial concern, a restaurant’s reputation and the trust of its customers suffer irreparable damage. Building trust among your customers requires you to take several steps in every aspect of your restaurant. Since your staff is crucial and perhaps the only point of contact with your customers, ensure that you hire credible people. For example, while recruiting them, you can carry out background checks to ensure that they can handle sensitive information and build trust with your customers.
Conclusion
The sad reality of the digital age is that it just takes a few seconds for the hackers to break into your restaurant’s systems and dent its age-old reputation. The repercussions of such a data breach can be irreversible, and it may be hard to recover from it. As frightening as it might sound, proper planning, vigilant staff, modifying the restaurant design, and investing in robust IT infrastructure are some of your weapons against hackers.
This article mentions some of the well-proven practices to enhance the cyber security of a restaurant. Hopefully, with thoughtful planning, meticulous execution, & taking note of these points, you will be able to secure your restaurant against hackers. Remember, to win this battle against hackers, you have to win every time while they have to succeed only once.
