Read how Marriott has rapidly deployed Cisco DNS-layer security across nearly 5,000 properties to advance human rights.

For over 96 years, Marriott International, the world’s largest hospitality company, has been Putting People First. Grounded in its people-first culture, Marriott has taken the lead in the fight against some of the industry’s highest-risk and most pressing issues, including human trafficking and child exploitation.

One form of exploitation is online child sexual abuse. As reports of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) reached a record high in 2023, it is more important than ever to expand protections for children online.

Recognizing that hotels can become unwilling venues for individuals to access CSAM, Abbe Horswill, Director of Human Rights and Social Impact at Marriott, led the charge in exploring how the company could make a material impact to protect children online. Horswill partnered closely with Marriott’s IT team to evaluate security solutions that could help.

Using security to block access to child abuse materials on the internet

When the social impact and IT teams at Marriott were evaluating security solutions to block access to malicious websites, they prioritized ease of deployment, scalability and optimizing the guest network experience.

“I have a saying that IT is not magic, but this was pretty close to it.”

— Paul Oyelakin, Information Security Consultant, Marriott International

After conducting a pilot, Cisco Umbrella DNS-layer security emerged with differentiated efficacy, performance, and manageability for Marriott.

Why Cisco Security checked all the right boxes for Marriott

Let’s take a closer look at the top three reasons why Marriott chose Umbrella’s cloud-delivered DNS-layer security, which is part of our Cisco Security Service Edge (SSE) product family, to block access to child exploitation materials.

• Ability to stop threats earlier with DNS-layer security: It’s easily one of the quickest, most effective ways for organizations to improve their security stack. Domain Name System (DNS) security uses the internet’s infrastructure to block malicious and unwanted domains before a connection is ever established. Umbrella’s threat intelligence harnesses the power of Cisco Talos, the world’s largest non-governmental threat intelligence organization, so you can better detect and anticipate attacks.

• Fast time to value: Umbrella is the simplest cloud security service to deploy. There is no hardware to install or software to manually update, and the browser-based interface provides quick setup and ongoing management. Marriott was able to roll out DNS-layer security to a majority of their in-scope properties throughout the U.S. and Canada in less than a month — with each property taking only 2-15 minutes to deploy.

• Native integration with Internet Watch Foundation lists: Marriott was impressed with Umbrella’s native integration with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). If you are using Umbrella, you are already blocking access to sites on the IWF list, where users are known to discuss and spread child abuse materials. Umbrella blocks these illegal websites by default.

Marriott to expand deployment

Marriott has deployed Cisco DNS-layer security to nearly 5,000 properties throughout the U.S. and Canada, with plans to expand globally this year. Marriott relies on DNS-layer security to secure guest Wi-Fi access and block access to the websites on the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) list.

“Marriott has long championed human rights and human trafficking awareness. Combatting child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) is an important extension of that work. The IWF provided the level of rigor we needed in a URL list, and Cisco’s security technology provided the means to easily apply it.”

— Abbe Horswill, Director, Human Rights and Social Impact, Marriott International

Since deploying DNS-layer security in February 2023, thousands of attempts to access CSAM have been blocked.

Join the movement

As an industry leader in the fight to protect children online, Marriott has actively shared lessons learned from the initiative with other hospitality companies to inspire collective action against online child exploitation. Marriott and Cisco want other organizations to join them in moving the needle to advance human rights. Together, we can make a difference and help make the internet a safer place. I encourage you to learn more about this inspiring story by checking out the full Marriott case study, which includes a video interview with Abbe Horswill.

You can also try Cisco DNS-layer security for yourself with our free, 14-day trial.