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?

I think the clothing is a lot better, but it’s primarily online.

Unless you work in IT you'd be scared and astounded by the shit things the happen in IT.

I do, so I'm not.

IT us written by humans at the end of the day and there's always a more devoted human out there not doing this 9-5 to pay the mortgage. Pulling off things like this is the ultimate thrill and validation that you are the best of the best to some.

If your just a normal programmer your mostly training yourself up weekly if not daily to stay up to date and praying to God the management team are doing to same across the entire Infructure and software side. No one person can do every single bit of a massive company like M&S.

I read on the BBC they are heading for 100mil cyber Insurance pay out

Where I live the physical shop is very small and has very limited stock, and I nearly always buy online.

We've lived near some quite big stores and still been forced to order things like uniform - but if we visist family their M & S was full of it.

Sizing also been an issue last time with teen bras has to send back and remember it being a pain.

I did feel their school uniform was last bit that had better quality than supermarkets or other retailers - especially as needed cotton for one child. Though last few years they were in Primark cotton, linen and cotton linen mixed shirts.

I think they'll probably pull though - maybe with store closures as they do have food side but do feel they've been slipping for a while and this won't help.

I don’t know but I really hope so.

Co-op are the same. Shelves been empty for a good week now. The loss must be horrendous

I live within walking distance of a city centre store, which isn't huge. Fresh food seems to be well stocked, but aisles for cupboard items are currently almost bare.
I wanted to buy some baby clothes from them before a holiday in a couple of weeks, but the local store has a clear priority towards baby girls clothing, and the boys stuff they do have is just tracksuits.

Gave in and paid a fortune to travel via bus to another, larger store- the gamble did not pay off. Literally about 75% of the baby section space was girls, boys again barely any range and what they did have was mostly tiny sizes. So as sorry as I feel for them, they clearly haven't handled the messaging well, and it's pretty infuriating being pointed towards their stores.

@MerryPortas I hope they will and I think they will given the strength of the brand, but the hackers have caused huge damage to their bottom line for this financial year and maybe beyond.
M&S is a victim in this and I think their loyal customers are waiting to get back to shopping online with them ASAP as a show of support (I certainly am). I've started getting marketing emails from them again so I'm prompted to browse new stock online and hope, if I see anything I fancy, I can buy it in store (I have one of the larger stores near me so there should be a good chance, I hope).
We shouldn't forget M&S employees who must also be terribly worried right now about whether the business will need to cut costs in the future, plus all of M&S's third party suppliers whose businesses will also have been impacted. This is all so awful for an historic brand that managed to reverse its decline in the late 90's/early 00's to become relevant again (including stocking other brands' products and accepting other credit cards like Next do).
I despise hackers - greedy, selfish people who don't care the havoc they wreak in other people's lives.

rather unkind. It seems to ebb and flow. Truly dreadful stuff with applique flowers on and then a run of half decent stuff.

No they aren’t at long term risk.

Yes, their profits will take a beating this year.

Very few stores can provide next day collection free of charge to a local store, of which most people will be in close reach of a store somewhere. NEXT is similar but they simply don’t have as many stores and John Lewis charge you for collection which in all honesty is an outrage.

M&S is too ingrained in our shopping habits to completely give over to other stores. Not one has the overall reach of M&S.

What it means is they are going to have to invest significantly in their online security systems…which may affect prices. But all stores will be looking at this now. Dior has recently been targeted.

I hope they do. We do our weekly shop in there and much prefer it to the other supermarkets in town. Oh and bras, I like their bras, too.

@mummytoonetryingfortwo, I guess you don't work in IT?

After the incident they would have been advised to switch off systems so would not immediately have been aware of the data breached. It takes weeks, literally, for investigations to find out what the hackers have infiltrated. It's akin to a burglar who has been in your house for weeks, undetected, you have to go through a very detailed analysis to check what might have been viewed. Imagine the scale of challenge for an organisation. As others mentioned British Library had similar, just not as high profile.

The breach is heavily rumoured to have come from hackers tricking IT users into giving away passwords. That's human error. Should they sack the staff who fell for the fraudsters? People are always the weakest link in hacking incidents.

The UK is seeing unprecedented levels of hacking attempts, it isn't teenagers in their bedrooms but state backed hackers who are operating at a highly sophisticated level. They worked for months to hack the retail sector, very few organisations could sustain that focus.

A professor from Warwick says the degree of hacking currently s "terrifying". I wish people could understand that hostile nations want to cause economic chaos for the UK so we need to support our businesses - otherwise you are helping them achieve their objectives.

Gosh, some of the comments on this thread, I had no idea MN has so many IT and cyber security experts. Am also disgusted by those who hope they don't recover, just think of all the job losses including the greeter who stands at the entrance. Speaking of which, I always make a point of saying hello/good bye to them because it's a demoralising job to do, more so given how many shoppers hard stare/stare through them (as evidenced by a pp).

Yes, M&S will recover. Of course they did the right thing not paying the ransom. It is regrettable it's taking time to sort out but the nature of a cyber attack isn't something that follows a set path. I read it's the Scattered Spider hacking group who did this. They're infamous and cause huge amounts of trouble, often infiltrating IT departments to access systems, so it's not just through simple offsite hacking. They also plant bugs across systems that wreck havoc once the initial leak is found, it's like a Trojan horse in a way. This is why some cyber attacks take weeks, if not months, to find a solution to. Whatever which way, M&S will find its feet again. They always do.

I am 5ft 7 with a 28 inch waist and get quite a few things there, also worth noting that a "stout" person can slim down but being unpleasant can't be changed through diet and lifestyle.

Haven’t given them a penny since they let men get their kicks reviewing how women’s knickers fit them in online reviews. Moderated reviews.

Maybe their online operations being screwed ain’t such a bad thing.

I think M&S will survive going by how busy our local food store is.

I have suspicion that Morrisons may also have had recent issues. Tried to order from their wholesale page and couldn't order anything own brand for a couple of days. All showing as out of stock.

They ARE at fault. Every business/organisation suffers cyber attacks. Most have robust systems in place to stop such attacks. M&S have been caught with their pants down. Taking precautions against such attacks is a pretty essential/fundamental task for their IT depts. The cyber criminals will have attacked all M&S competitors and failed to get through, which of itself tells you that M&S weren't prepared and hadn't taken all precautions.

Yep, our village Co Op is just getting worse. No sign of any improvement at all. They ran out of soft drinks and crisps last week. A couple of days ago, they'd virtually run out of individual chocolate bars. Still no fresh fruit nor veg. The only things that seem to be coming through are fresh flowers, limited milk and limited bread, and sandwiches. Three weeks now. They really should have found ways to source stocks using alternative systems.

I find it really alarming because what if that happened to a bank? Luckily for M&S they do have a collaboration with Ocado so those products are still being sold online.

They'll be OK. Their new clothes designers have vastly improved styles recently. It should keep their heads above water. I've bought a few things, in store, this year.

I've just realised all the old fashioned embellished Per Una stuff has finally gone too.

Well they didn’t have good disaster recovery in place and have paid the price. Proper penetration testing would be expected in this day and age.

Definitely think it would have been a whole different game before the latest designers came in who have (in my opinion) done wonders for the range compared to where they was. Pre this design shift I think they would have been in real trouble, and possibly even just become a good business.
Now though although it's going to be troubled waters ahead so long as they stop firmly away from the Gordy embellishments and odd designs I think they will survive
Agree the greeter is an odd position in my opinion I find it awkward I don't need hello I need serve me at the bloody till and stop gabbing away from the till.

I twirled around a large M&S last week and it seemed quite well stocked but couldn't find anything for me apart from underwear. There's basics and there's an esoteric selection of other items but maybe I'm not 'short and stout' enough (doh, I am really!).
Funnily enough every independent lingerie shop I've ever been to slags off their bra fitting but that's the dog eat dog world of ladies' undercrackers, eh? I do hope they recover. I'm still mourning the passing of Wilko.

I’ve found the stock availability has been way better in my two local (big) stores, so they must be pushing the online stock out into stores in the mean time.

I hope other businesses are examining their own IT for weaknesses, but the cyber attackers are stealthy and by the time they hit they’ve already been in there looking for the way in without anyone knowing.

When I finally got back into my account to change the password, I took a closer look at the details they held about me. I hardly ever order on line from them - twice this year for things that were out of stock in the local big shop.

I was horrified to find a payment card in there - I never allow ‘ save these details to make it quicker next time’ . It’s only the last 4 numbers but it still should not be there. Then a delivery address of some flowers to my daughter 5 years ago. Again - I did not opt for this to be a permanent alternative address.

It seemed that they were concentrating on making the front of the ordering interface as smooth as possible without paying enough attention to the vulnerability of the data and customer’s positive, clear options about what details could be retained.

I hope they do. I use them mainly for food (direct and via Ocado) and, as a single person, it actually works out pretty good value for me as their fruit and veg stays fresh so much longer so I end up throwing away much less. Their food, even cupboard and ready meals, seem to be less UPF heavy too.

I've noticed some cupboard items out of stock which I've had to source elsewhere but most things are fine.