Marriott International has joined forces with U.K.-based nonprofit Internet Watch Foundation to combat online child exploitation by using technology solutions to restrict guest network access to websites with child sexual abuse materials in its hotels. The collaboration will be the first of its kind for the hotel industry.
In January, Marriott established a new Global Property Network Standard to have hotels block access to websites with CSAM from the hotels' guest network. As part of this initiative with the IWF, Marriott is working with Cisco to implement its security technology to block access to CSAM-containing webpages on the IWF's blocked URL list.
"Marriott is proud to be the first hospitality company to join the IWF and is utilizing Cisco's security technology to restrict access to exploitative materials through hotel networks," Marriott International CEO Anthony Capuano said in a statement. "As a leader in the hospitality industry and a company that believes in putting people first, Marriott has committed to fighting human trafficking and other pressing human rights issues."
According to the IWF, Marriott's membership provides access to the IWF's list of CSAM-containing webpages to better enable filtering and blocking. Each webpage is manually assessed by the IWF analysts to confirm the presence of criminal content. Once the CSAM is removed from the webpage, the IWF will also remove the webpage from the list, ensuring the list is up-to-date and webpages are not unnecessarily blocked.
"In 2022 the IWF identified and removed more than 255,000 webpages containing child sexual abuse imagery," said Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the IWF. "This equates to millions of individual images and videos of children being exploited. It is through valuable partnerships with organizations like Marriott International that we can make the internet safer for both children and adults and we welcome them as a new Member. By using our URL list to protect their networks and people from risks online, Marriott will help to reduce the suffering of survivors who are essentially revictimized when images of their abuse are viewed and shared online."
Cisco's Umbrella security solution will provide Marriott with efficient management of guest internet access, cloud-delivered web filtering, integrated SafeSearch browsing and block lists, and the configuration used by Marriott will prevent collection of guest data.
Marriott conducted a pilot in November at six properties in the U.S. and will begin to deploy the technology throughout U.S. and Canadian hotels this month. A global rollout to other regions is expected through 2024.