Retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) has resumed online ordering for its Irish customers, four months after a cyber incident hit the company.
Customers were notified on Thursday that both online deliveries and click and collect orders were now available in Ireland.
In an email, the company said online orders were available for its fashion, home and beauty ranges, and online orders can also now be returned to Irish stores.
The British high street giant was forced to stop accepting orders online after it fell victim to hackers, leading to chaos across its network of shops. Stores experienced problems with contactless pay and click and collect services, before it disclosed it had been managing a “cyber incident” on April 22nd.
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M&S said hackers broke into its systems by tricking employees at a third-party contractor, skirting its digital defences to launch a cyberattack.
It later wrote to all of its customers for whom it had email addresses, including some in Ireland, informing them that personal customer data had been taken in the attack, and reported the incident to data protection authorities in Ireland.
The attack also took its automated stock ordering systems offline, leaving the retailer struggling to keep the shelves filled.
The company has been gradually returning to normal business. In June, M&S resumed taking some online orders for clothing lines for customers in England, Scotland and Wales after a 46-day hiatus. However, online ordering remained paused for customers in the Republic and Northern Ireland.
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The incident is expected to impact the company’s financial results. M&S previously forecast the attack would cost it about £300 million (€354.5 million) in lost operating profit in its 2025/26 financial year, though it hopes to halve the impact through insurance and cost control. The company said it would use the crisis to accelerate improvements to its technology. – Additional reporting: Reuters
