WHSmith hacked: ‘Staff data accessed’ in cyber attack on high street chain

Hackers have accessed data belonging to both current and former empoloyees
WHSmith has reportedly suffered a cyber attack
PA Wire

High street giant WHSmith says it has suffered a cyber attack in which hackers accessed employee data.

Hackers are understood to have accessed information pertaining to both current and former members of staff as part of the breach on Thursday.

WHSmith said the incident has not impacted its trading activities and stressed its website, customer accounts and customer databases are on separate, unaffected systems.

A company spokesperson said: “Upon becoming aware of the incident, we immediately launched an investigation, engaged specialist support services and implemented our incident response plans, which included notifying the relevant authorities.”

It added: “WHSmith takes the issue of cyber security extremely seriously and investigations into the incident are ongoing.

“We are notifying all affected colleagues and have put measures in place to support them.”

The breach comes amid a wave of cyber attacks in recent months, with Royal Mail’s international postal service suffering lengthy disruption after hackers targeted the group.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in