Donald Trump's hotel chain penalised $50,000 for security breaches

US presidential candidate Donald Trump's hotel chain agreed to pay a $50,000 penalty and revamp its data security policies following the exposure of 70,000 credit card numbers and other personal information of its customers in a couple of security breaches.

Attorney general Eric T Schneiderman of New York, who announced the settlement on Friday, said in a news release that banks tracing fraudulent card use last year found that the cards had last been legally used at Trump hotels, pointing to the location of the security breach.

Malware was also found at a number of Trump hotels and a hacker in 2014 had gained unauthorised access to sensitive information.

The high-end hotel chain, which included the Trump Soho and Trump International in New York and properties in Chicago, Las Vegas and Waikiki, Hawaii, was aware of the infiltration as far back as June 2015, but customers were not warned for four months, which, according to the attorney general's office was in violation of state laws requiring expedient notification.

According to Schneiderman, delays in implementing security measures might have contributed to additional exposure of personal data in November 2015, as also a breach discovered in March.

But even as the data case winds down, cyberthreats had taken a huge role in Trump's presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton.

The hotel chain, one of the businesses of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, had agreed to pay $50,000 in penalties and also introduce measures to strengthen its data security practices, according to the attorney general's office.

''It is vital in this digital age that companies take all precautions to ensure that consumer information is protected, and that if a data breach occurs, it is reported promptly to our office, in accordance with state law," Schneiderman said in a statement Friday.