M&S website resumes online orders six weeks after cyber-attack

Marks & Spencer has reopened its website to shoppers, six weeks after it was forced to halt online orders after a cyber-attack.

The retailer said on its website that customers “can now place online orders with standard delivery to England, Scotland and Wales”. Deliveries to Northern Ireland “will resume in the coming weeks”.

“We will resume click and collect, next-day delivery, nominated-day delivery and international ordering in the coming weeks,” it said.

The retailer is estimated to have been losing about £25m in online clothing and homewares sales a week after it was forced to stop taking orders on its website within days of “threat actors”, thought to be a hacking collective known as Scattered Spider, gaining access to its systems over the Easter weekend.

The company expects the hack to cost it up to £300m in profits this year, although about half of that is expected to be offset by insurance and other measures. It has previously said disruption to its website could last until July, and some online services are not expected to restart immediately.

Shoppers have been able to browse online, as well as shop in M&S’s physical stores using cash or cards for most of the period since the hack.

However, stocks of food and clothing in stores have also been affected, meaning that M&S has lost out during a busy period for retailers as a warm, sunny spring has driven an unexpected rise in household spending.

M&S has also admitted that some personal information relating to thousands of customers – including names, addresses, dates of birth and order histories – was taken in the cyber-attack.

Stuart Machin, the chief executive of M&S, has said he expects the retailer to recover “at pace” helped by bringing forward investment in its IT systems and website as part of the systems rebuild forced on it by the hackers.

The attack on M&S emerged days before cyber-attacks were reported by the Co-op and Harrods. More recently, the sportswear brand Adidas and the lingerie group Victoria’s Secret have also been targeted.