Wouldn‘t the world be a better place if there weren‘t any criminals on the loose? Who‘d need police? And, just imagine the costs governments, companies and individuals would save if they didn‘t need lawyers.

This thought brings us to the hotel industry. Many hoteliers are facing accusations by legal authorities about hotel guests purposely committing internet crimes by entering and downloading illegal material through the hotels’ internet gateways. This ranges from major crimes like hacking military facilities to the simple stuff like running a peer-to-peer client for downloading music illegally. The associated fines can range anywhere from €1,000 to millions of Euros.

What we need to remember about the internet is that it’s based on numbers just like the telephone is. If someone on one side of the world notices that their system is being compromised, all they see is a series of numbers calling them.

Now, imagine someone using their room phone in a hotel to threaten someone with a bomb attack at an international airport. This sounds like the stuff movies are made of, but it has happened and when it does, the hotel is on the line because the police only have the hotel’s phone number. It’s up to the hotelier to inform the police who was in the room at the time the call was made.

The same scenario applies to the internet which is even more troublesome because guests are literally “dialling out” on your main extension which is the hotel’s public IP address. Your telephone system can tell you who actually committed the crime, but does your internet installation do the same?

With Acentic Horizon hoteliers can answer these questions with confidence. Acentic Horizon can log deep into each individually browsed website in the room. And because there is also the need to comply with local legislation and privacy regulations, the Horizon logging facility is configurable to the individual obligations.

In each of the scenarios our customers have faced to date, Acentic Horizon was able to identify the criminals even if it was in-room guests, drive-by visitors or conference participants, effectively taking the hotels or system owners out of the game through one simple phone call which allowed them to focus on their core business.