YubiKeys forge Hyatt’s path
to passwordless
220,000 employees
50,000 endpoint devices
1,500+ global locations
Challenge
As one of the world’s biggest hotel chains, Hyatt needed a cybersecurity strategy that proactively fought evergrowing threats while also being user-friendly, all at massive scale.
Microsoft Office 365 and Entra ID (Azure Active Directory) Premium worked well for identity and access management, but Hyatt’s mobile-based MFA with one-time passwords created massive frustration.
Employees began tapping “approve” on every prompt— leaving the company vulnerable to phishing and man-in the-middle attacks due to MFA fatigue.
When customer-facing employees in hotel lobbies used their phones to approve an MFA prompt, it appeared they were using them for personal reasons—which is not an image Hyatt wanted to convey
Solution
Hyatt turned to the YubiKey’s phishing-resistant MFA to protect:
- All applications that contain personally identifiable information (PII) and cardholder data
- Call center and loyalty program employees who work in mobile-restricted environments or remotely on insecure networks
- Access to privileged access management (PAM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems
- Vendors who play a critical role in Hyatt’s supply chain security
“The biggest benefit that Hyatt is going to receive from deploying YubiKeys is to be able to get rid of passwords in our environment. You can’t compromise what you don’t have. I think we’re going to have a great big party once we turn that button off and there’s no more passwords anywhere in the environment.”
Phishing-resistant MFA with the YubiKey
Employees simply tap their YubiKey at the beginning of their day and don’t need to authenticate again until the machine is locked
or restarted—which eliminates MFA frustration and increases productivity.
Results
- Phishing-resistant MFA for all PII and cardholder data
- A path to passwordless authentication
- A seamless employee authentication experience
- Faster access to applications for better guest support
“Our users have been taken aback by how seamless everything is. Productivity is so much better. It’s not just another thing that’s security— it’s something that is also making the end user’s life easier.”