Marks & Spencer relaunches click and collect

Months after encountering a major cyberattack, British department store Marks & Spencer has relaunched its click and collect service.

The retailer made the announcement on its social media platforms, where it stated that customers were now once again able to make orders online for collection in stores across the UK, as well as return online orders to its stores.

Marks & Spencer was forced to halt the service, alongside other digitally-dependent operations, after hackers gained access to its backend as part of the attack in April.

Since then, the retailer has slowly reintroduced some of its impacted services, including its sale of third-party brands, relaunched in June, and its Sparks loyalty programme, which followed in July.

While the retailer has not explicitly commented on the cause for the delay of click and collect’s own reintroduction, a report by The Times suggested that the cyberattack may have disrupted operations between online ordering, inventory management, payment systems and in-store logistics, making it harder to fully secure the service.

As confirmed by Marks & Spencer in the weeks that followed, the cyber incident, which has been linked to hacker groups DragonForce and Scatter Spider, also included theft of customer data, such as names, postal addresses and dates of birth.

In a financial statement, the company said that the attack could result in a 300 million pound profit reduction for the current financial year, however, it was confident it could return to performance levels seen prior to the incident over the course of the reporting period.