Amadeus Offers Enhancements and Strategies to Protect Data

In their off hours, travel agents do what everyone does: They go online, they buy online, they answer e-mail and participate in social media. They have become accustomed to certain rules and rituals of online life: Never open an attachment or click on a link in an e-mail that looks suspicious. Don’t use the same password over and over again. Mix it up a little when creating passwords with numbers and punctuation marks.

Many of us follow the rules, but it’s not uncommon to slack off a bit. 

At work, agents need to remember that the same rules apply, but in a much broader sense: Not only must they take care to protect their own data; they must protect the agency’s information and their customers’ as well.

If you think that’s a given, consider this: “Last year, we found that 17,000 agents were signing in with no password,” said Alix Arguelles, director of product management and consulting services for Amadeus North America.

Arguelles had several simple suggestions Travel Market Report readers can implement to protect agency and customer data privacy while on the job:

• Be Careful: Just as they do at home, travel sellers should carefully scrutinize any e-mail that purports to be from a known company but asks for passwords or other sensitive data. “We’re never, ever going to ask you for your password,” Arguelles said. “We don’t need it to log into the system or to support you.”

It’s easy to mistake a phishing e-mail — an attempt to obtain data by posing as a legitimate partner — if you’re not paying close attention. “Look carefully at the domain name,” Arguelles said. Often, a phishing attempt includes a legitimate company’s name in the domain, but it’s in the wrong place, she said. If you receive a suspicious e-mail purporting to be from your GDS provider, contact your help desk or rep.

• Be Responsive: Pay attention to the security alerts that ARC sends out and take action when advised.

• Deactivate at Night: Another way to protect your data is to deactivate your office at night, say from midnight to 6 a.m., Arguelles said. “So if anyone broke in, they couldn’t get into your system.” It’s easy to set this up, she said. ARC numbers are similar to phone numbers: “They’re not super confidential, but if you don’t have to provide it, don’t.”

Enhanced Security Measures

Amadeus is continually enhancing security measures to protect data.

Last year the company changed the parameters for passwords, limited the number of tries before the account is locked, and limited the length of time that a session can last. Passwords expire after 60 days, and all users are required to create new ones. “On the GDS side, we now hide the credit card number,” Arguelles said. “In the profile and the PNR, it’s encrypted.”

Currently, “we’re working to develop a local security server,” she said. “It’s the way we will handle security in the future.”

Instead of having different ways of signing into various Amadeus products, agents will have a single user ID and password, making it easier to remember that more complex password. The server will store each agent account with an e-mail address for resetting the password.

Amadeus also is developing “auto-deletion” of accounts that are unused for 60 days. Arguelles urged travel agency managers to clean up the signs of employees who leave the agency as soon as possible. “It’s sad, but true,” she said. All too often, “there’s somebody out there who wants to take advantage of you.”