There are security threats lying around every corner in this digital era, as most companies use some form of technology that handles business-related data. And the intercity bus sector is no different.
Because the ticket reservation system is the foundation of every bus operator, their security is critical and cannot be disregarded. If something goes wrong, it may have a devastating effect on your business. But how can you tell whether your system is safe?
To help you, we’ve highlighted three security dangers to a reservation system, as well as some potential countermeasures to help you keep your system secured.
Access to Unauthorized Data
The major threats in this situation are the workers themselves or outside hackers that want to delete, steal, or manipulate the data in the system.
Symptoms of a security breach:
- Easy system access — You can access the network from any computer (for example, a library computer), and you do not need to join the company’s network.
- Poor security policies — For example, computers do not automatically lock, building doorways are not locked, personnel is not trained, and so on.
- Poor password standards – The password restrictions are insufficient, or there is no password rotation.
- No encryption — Because the data in the network is not encrypted, practically anybody may access it without much difficulty.
- Inadequate system security measures – Simple access to the ticket reservation system hosting environment, zero firewalls, and so forth. Typically, this is handled by the supplier of a cloud-based system. If you have the system on the website, you must maintain it yourself.
Possible solutions
- Implement appropriate security regulations that govern how employees use their devices. Some of the fundamental elements that the policies must cover are software installation, virus protection and updates, processes and standards (password strength, etc.), user roles for accessing only necessary data, and so on.
- Enable the firewall and secure access to the ticket reservation system’s hosting environment. This security factor is handled by the service provider if the system is cloud-based.
- Enable data encryption between the server and the client app.
- Finally, do frequent security audits. These audits will provide you with an excellent picture of the current condition of system security. Throughout the process, you should assess the dangers to your system.
We advocate using service providers who specialize in the security of such systems since threats are continuously changing and keeping up with the constantly changing IT-security environment is a lot of effort.
System Invasions
- A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) assault is the most prevalent sort of attack in a ticket reservation system, and it is now the key worry in internet security. The attack comprises a large number of bogus requests that “clog” the system and finally cause it to crash.
- Botnets are becoming an increasingly common method of carrying out the assault. A botnet is a collection of computers that have been infected with malware and are under the control of a malevolent actor.
As a result, the attacker has authority over that group and utilizes it to mimic the true activity of a person. This makes identifying the assault much more complex, which makes safeguarding the ticket reservation system against similar attacks more challenging.
- Recognizing the patterns of the attackers, i.e. distinguishing the genuine user’s queries from the bot’s, is the key to countering these assaults. If the pattern is recognized, it is feasible to filter them out using a firewall, preventing them from entering the system.
The simplest method to accomplish this is to choose a cloud service provider that already has suitable security measures in place. Alternatively, you can request that your internet service provider detect and prevent signals of a DDoS assault in your ticket reservation system.
Failures in Hardware and Software
- With the growing number of cloud service providers, the risks associated with hardware breakdowns are quite minimal. When something goes wrong with the hardware, the provider will handle it. That is when you take advantage of such service providers.
If you have your own servers, you are responsible for all hardware security-related operations (formation of fail-over clusters, backups, and so on). This implies you must have a person in charge of the hardware in the servers, as well as a budget for it (wage, gear, etc.).
To reduce software-related risks to a minimum, you should monitor the ticket reservation system’s important components and have a method in place to inform you of any problems. Furthermore, it is critical to keep frequent backups of your data, which will allow you to tackle all types of difficulties that may arise (e.g. hard-drive failure, corrupt data, etc.).
Conclusion
The security of such mission-critical systems cannot be underestimated. If you realized after reading this that there are certain aspects of ticket reservation system security that need to be improved, we propose that you get to work on them right away. The ideal alternative is to hire a cloud-based system provider that handles the majority of the labor.
