The sun is shining, Spring is in the air and thoughts are turning to summer vacations. Here’s something to think about before you fire up your laptop at the hotel. The most popular destination for hackers is hotel networks. Mark Small reported today:

recent industry research from TrustWave’s Spider Labs showed that hackers went after hotel networks more than any other destination in 2009, accounting for 38% of all known security breeches, more than the financial services industry (19%) and retail industries (14.2%) combined.

To make matters worse, the hotels didn’t discover that the breeches had even occurred for an average of 156 days, leaving plenty of time for the cyber-criminals to use stolen credit card information, or take advantage of the personal data harvested for any number of identity theft scams.

Just this week, Wyndham Hotel & Resorts, operators of hotel chains Days Inn, Ramada, Super8 and Howard Johnson, reported that their central hotel network had been compromised, with hackers stealing customer’s names, credit numbers and expiration dates.

You need to read Hackers Lurking in Hotel Networks, twice.