Will Marks and Spencer survive?

[MerryPortas]

It’s hard to imagine the full scale of the cyber attack and the impact on their business.

yes, annoying for the shoppers, but they must be losing millions in daily revenue online, and I doubt that’s being backfilled by increased physical footfall.

stock levels are unpredictable - understandably - so confidence is low.

shoppers are creatures of habit, and change is habit forming.

So my question is, do you think M and S is at risk?

They must be at risk if they can’t get the systems running soon. It’s been a few weeks now and people find alternatives. Not everyone is close to a physical shop and the small ones in particular, have never had the range or stock levels.

Surely they’ve got insurance to cover cyberattacks? For at least a chunk of their loss

I agree. I have gone elsewhere to buy the school trousers I always get from M&S after trying two stores that didn’t have what was needed.

The food side will. I'm tall so don't buy much from there anyway clothes wise apart from extra long which is only online, when they come back online they will just be part of my few shops I buy things from anyway. Nothing will change, I don't have enough choice to not use a shop. It was reported they have insurance but I forget the details

They should have business interruption insurance. but yes, I want some new school shirts and summer trousers for me. I know exactly what I need but can’t order online.

The stock in our local store is very random and seems to be an ‘old persons’ m and s where they focus on that demographic and prioritise stock accordingly. Not sure I can be bothered to go in on the slim chance they have what I need.

Woman's wear in M&S is for the short and stout, there will be plenty of custom.

They will take a massive hit this year but I expect by next year it will be forgotten and people will come back. But I’d expect massive discounts on summer clothing in the sales soon.

Cyber insurance generally covers up to a set amount, generally I see companies with coverage up to around £10mill and it only pays if the attack happened in a way that wasn’t reasonably foreseeable, if they had vulnerabilities that were known from any scans or would have been likely prevented with procedures/training that they hadn’t implemented then they may not get a pay out. They may have other forms of insurance that will bridge some of the gap but this will be a costly and probably preventable incident.

I feel incredibly sympathetic to them. The staff in store are clearly dealing with having to keep records on bits of paper. One staff member said their click and collect for foreign currency is coming back from next week so I assume full click and collect isn’t far behind.

Co-op are in a similar state though they luckily don’t rely on online orders so much. Longer term M&S will recover hopefully. The last thing I want is another chain of shops closing. The high street is dire enough as it is.

I hope so, I have just bought shares at a low price to take advantage when they go back up.
Of course I also hope so for sake of all the staff

It’s a big mess and a lot of people will end up going elsewhere now unfortunately. I am just hoping I can get ds school trousers from them!

I hope not. This is a disgrace from them.

they were victims of a cyber attack. How is that a disgrace from then? It’s a disgrace from the people who carry out these attacks

They have not done anything since, have they? They allowed customer data to be stolen, lied about it for weeks and only told them when they were basically forced to. They are still offline, weeks later.

Of course they are all just sat in their offices twiddling their thumbs 🙄

Should have just paid the bloody ransom. I heard it was about £4m. They are losing that in online sales EVERY DAY and then some.

And agree @mummytoonetryingfortwo they've lost credibility as they initially said no customer data was affected and have now backtracked.

Nobody "allows" customer data to be stolen, this is literally an attack and they are the victims

Huge institutions like the British library took months to recover from a cyber attack. It isn’t easy to deal with one. I think I buy more from m and s than any other shop - food and clothes so I think I’m keeping it going!

What an absurd statement. My friend is 5’9 and a size 8, it’s her go to shop.

Don't they make most of their money from food sales now? I would have thought they'd be fine.

I’ve read reports that their systems were outdated and vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Exactly. Pay the ransom and sort your systems out!! They were very adamant that no data was stolen. Four weeks later, a barrage of spam calls and an attempted fraud on my bank account later, they say customer data was stolen. It’s disgraceful

It took them over 2 days to realise their systems had been infiltrated and the manner in which they were was avoidable. It's arrogance when companies don't invest enough in IT in this day and age, their comms to customers when they knew what data had been accessed was woeful too. I suspect they'll be fine when they manage to sort themselves out, but if people read what actually happened I'm sure their reputation will take a hit rather than it just being aw poor them, couldn't have seen that coming.

I don’t expect this will send them under, but it will be difficult.

They’ve done well with clothing recently attracting a younger audience. So it would be a shame.

This news article says £1bn was wiped off their value

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-14685013/amp/Marks-Spencer-losses-hit-1bn-wake-devastating-cyber-attacks.html

My heart goes out to Co Op also.