Nordic Choice Hotels is a massive hotel chain in Scandinavia, the Baltics, and Finland with more than 200 properties.

Unfortunately, it suffered a ransomware attack last year, forcing the hotel chain to change its digital security.

Nordic Choice Hotels Switches to Chrome OS

According to 9to5Google, the ransomware attack had led to the hotel chain to require its IT staff to take down their internet and network after their encrypted device files were hacked.

The hack demanded the hotel chain to pay a ransom to get their files back, or the files will be leaked online. The files consisted of employee records and not guest information.

In 2020, Google bought a company that offers software to switch old computers into Chrome OS-like devices.

The said company, CloudReady, is what the hotel chain used to convert thousands of ransomware-locked Windows computers and laptops into Chromebooks.

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As for the impact, the staff had to resort to market and whiteboard while the hacked key card systems required employees to lock in all of their guests via a master key card.

Instead of spending hours removing the virus from each of the computers, the hotel chain had decided to switch to Chrome as that project was already underway even before the attack happened.

All in all, 2,000 laptops were converted to Chrome via CloudReady in just 48 hours. Google had aided the transition by letting the hotel chain jump in the queue to get the project finished faster.

The hotel chain could get everything up and running again by changing the operating system. The adjustments can be made from the company's head office, and no one needs to travel to each hotel to clean each computer.

Currently, CloudReady provides an experience similar to Chromebook, and it is built on top of the Chromium OS. Google plans to make it an official Chrome OS option, and consumers can upgrade it anytime.

The Ransomware Attack

The attack had left Nordic Choice Hotel staff without any access to the hotel's reservation system, which is used to book rooms, receive payments, and check the guests in and out of the rooms.

Even though the staff changed to manual procedures to continue the business operations, the hotel informed the guests of the delays that the attack caused.

According to Bleeping Computer, the members were not able to log in to their accounts to book rooms and manage their reservations. It also prevented them from applying reward points for discounts.

Nordic Choice Hotel confirmed the attack on a blog post on their website and informed their club members of what happened.

The Norwegian Data Protection Authority and the Norwegian National Security Authority took action after they were notified of the ransomware attack.

The hotel chain stated that their investigations did not indicate that the data had been leaked online, but they can't guarantee that it won't happen in the future as the perpetrators have the files. The company added that the incident entails a risk that the file about the bookings may be irretrievable.

Ransomware attacks have been prevalent these past two years. In October 2021, candy maker Ferrera suffered from a ransomware attack that affected the production of their products.

In December 2021, Kronos's HR suffered from a ransomware attack that affected its payroll. 

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