The Co-operative Group has become the second retail giant in the UK to fall victim to a cyber attack in the space of a week.
The Rochdale-founded organisation, which has over 7,000 stores across the UK, has been forced to shut down its IT systems after it was targeted by hackers.
The news comes just a week after it was widely reported that Marks and Spencer (M&S) was dealing with an attack of a similar nature which was impacting its click & collect and contactless services.
A Co-op spokesperson said: “We have recently experienced attempts to gain unauthorised access to some of our systems.
“As a result, we have taken proactive steps to keep our systems safe, which has resulted in a small impact to some of our back office and call centre services.
“All our stores (including quick commerce operations) and funeral homes are trading as usual.
“We are working hard to reduce any disruption to our services and would like to thank our colleagues, members, partners and suppliers for their understanding during this period.
“We are not asking our members or customers to do anything differently at this point. We will continue to provide updates as necessary.”
Scott Dawson, CEO of payment processor DECTA, feels the attacks illustrate a worrying lack of resilience in the systems we rely on.
“The attempted hack on Co-op’s IT systems forced a shutdown of crucial back-office functions and exposed alarming vulnerabilities. Retailers can no longer afford to treat resilience as optional as this becomes more of a trend,” he said.
“This incident, coming on the heels of major breaches at Marks & Spencer and other high-profile targets, highlights how brittle legacy architectures and siloed security practices are, and no match for sophisticated threat actors.
“Until businesses adopt uniform metrics and invest in fail-safe recovery plans, every transaction – and every customer relationship – remains at risk. When a single intrusion forces entire back-office operations offline, every step from inventory management to customer service teeters on collapse.
“Much like the repeated failures of banking apps, this illustrates a fundamental weakness in the resilience of the systems we rely on most. It’s no longer enough to simply talk about resilience; it’s a crucial element of modern business, especially when dealing with finances.
“The lack of standardised ways to measure resilience has contributed to it being dismissed as mere rhetoric by some business leaders.
“It’s time to move beyond rhetoric: businesses must move from reactive patchwork to proactive resilience engineering architected into every layer of IT strategy, or retailers will continue to pay the price. Only then can retailers protect revenue streams, reputations and the trust of the millions who rely on them.”
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