Case Study: Marriott International reduces breach risk and accelerates detection with Lepide

How Lepide Would Have Helped to Prevent the Marriott Data Breach

This theoretical case study looks at the 2014 Starwood/Marriott breach that exposed the personal data of roughly 300 million guests. Attackers used a Remote Access Trojan and exploited weak Active Directory hygiene and a lack of monitoring in the legacy Starwood reservation system; the intrusion went undetected for years, resulting in heavy remediation costs, an ICO fine, lawsuits, and significant reputational damage.

The Lepide Data Security Platform could have reduced the AD attack surface (removing stale accounts, enforcing stronger password policies and flagging privilege changes), discovered and classified sensitive guest data, monitored file‑server and user activity for anomalies, and applied DLP controls to block exfiltration. Those measures could have sped detection and response, limited the scope of data loss, and lessened regulatory fines, investigation expenses and reputational impact.

Marriott International