My first inkling of the damaging cyber attack on Marks and Spencer was when I entered a store at the Easter weekend and was told that contactless payments were not working. It threatened to ruin the trip until I realised I could scan food items on the M&S app on my phone and use Apple Pay instead.
It says something about our acute dependence on online commerce that the only way to circumvent a cyber attack was by hacking the store in another way. If only the rest of the technological answer were so simple for M&S: five weeks later, the food and clothing retail chain faces a £300mn hit to operating profits, and online clothes sales remain suspended.
M&S food stores are mostly well stocked again after gaps appeared on shelves, but the struggle to rebuild its operations continues behind the scenes, and could take until July to be completed. As another business victim of a ransomware attack said of the experience: “What we weren’t ready for was what is essentially vandalism.”