The M&S and Co-op attacks need to be a wake up call to every business, service provider, leader, policy maker and contingency planner in this country. All it would take to bring complete chaos to every town and city in the country would be a simultaneous attack on our supermarkets and their supply chains.
The M&S attack is now weeks on and it’s plain to see that whatever systems they used prior to this were finely tuned to ensure stores were well stocked all of the time and that without these systems it is virtually impossible to have any semblance of operational continuity. Until I walked in and saw my local M&S almost fully depleted of fresh fruit, salad, vegetables, ready meals, sandwiches, cereals, tinned goods, bakery I was blissfully unaware of how much of an impact these attacks could have.
Now imagine if these attackers did the same to Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, Lidl, Aldi, Waitrose, Ocado, Booths, Spar, Cost Cutters, Home Bargains. It could cripple the whole Nation and bring about a risk of social unrest on a scale never seen before. What plans are in place should such an unthinkable yet entirely possible scenario arise? Where exactly would we get food from if we couldn’t pay for it or it simply wasn’t arriving into stores?
There doesn’t seem to be a week that goes by without hearing of payments problems, connectivity issues, network failures. Yes a lot will be purely benign technical issues but hackers will be testing the perimeters searching for any vulnerabilities to exploit.
Businesses with all their operational eggs in one basket need to urgently put in place multilayered plans to avoid becoming the next M&S and risking weeks long chaos should such an attack happen to them.