Marks and Spencer staff have said it could be another week before disruptions caused by last week’s cyber attack are resolved.
Online purchases at the high street retailer have been paused since Friday and gift card transactions remain affected. As a result, the company has seen more than £700 million wiped off its stock market valuation since first facing problems.
One retail expert told ITV News the pause in app and online sales could be costing the retailer as much as £3.5m a day.
M&S has declined to give a timeframe for when it expects normal services to resume and refused to offer an update on the cyber attack.
Their most recent statement on the incident was made on April 25, where they apologised to customers and said some services had been paused as part of a “proactive management of a cyber incident.”
The ongoing disruption comes amid reports the retailer has asked agency staff at it’s East Midlands distribution centre not to come in to work, as well as locking out all remote-working employees from their IT systems.
ITV News understands several stores as well as online Ocado orders have been left short of products as the store battles on-going distribution issues.
Retail expert, Harry Kind told ITV News: “With web sales accounting for about a third of their business in clothing and home products, an indefinite pause on online orders will be having a massive financial hit in the short term.
“But this will be a real blow to their long term brand too – M&S is known as a dependable stalwart of the high street but when birthday flowers go undelivered and holiday swimming trunks fail to materialise, that reputation frays quickly.
“Customers deserve to know, as soon as possible, not just when their orders will arrive but whether any of their personal data has been exposed.”
Although an exact figure of the cost of this cyber attack is difficult to calculate, Harry says it could be in the millions.
“With online clothing and home sales worth £1.268bn a year according to their latest published financial results, M&S could be losing out on roughly £3.5 million for each day this shutdown drags on.”
The first reports of a problem came over Easter weekend with shoppers saying they were struggling to use gift cards, contactless payments and click & collect.
On Tuesday the retailer confirmed this was due to a “cyber incident” which they were working hard to resolve.
On Friday M&S announced they were pausing online orders as they continued to work on fixing the issue.
While the retailer is yet to acknowledge the cause of the disruption, ITV News has spoken to cyber security experts who say the effects are synonymous with a ransomware attack.
This involves maliciously encrypting data or files and demanding money in return for unlocking them.
ITV News was told it’s highly likely the retailer restricted access to all digital systems whilst systematically working out where the problem was.
A National Cyber Security Centre spokesperson said: “We are working with Marks and Spencer to support their response to a cyber incident.”
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