M&S: Hundreds of warehouse staff told to stay at home following cyber attack

M&S has instructed hundreds of agency workers from its main distribution centre to stay at home as it deals with the impacts of its cyberattack.

Around 200 staff members who were due to take on shift work at its East Midlands Castle Donington clothing and homewares logistics centre have been instructed not to show up, Sky News reported.

It is understood that agency staff comprise roughly 20% of Castle Donington’s workforce and the retailer had been scaled down their support due to the circumstances.

The source added that M&S’ own staff members who work at the centre had been told to turn up as normal, noting “there is work for them to do”.

On Friday (25 April), M&S suspended online orders via its UK & Ireland websites and apps and some M&S International operated websites as part of its “proactive management” of the incident.

“We continue to manage the incident proactively and the M&S team – supported by leading experts – is working extremely hard to restore online operations and continue to serve customers well,” it said.

The retailer paused click and collect orders in the week following the cyber incident after customers were left unable to use contactless payments or click-and-collect services over the Bank holiday weekend.

Although it remained unclear how long the disruption to the retailer’s ecommerce operations would go on for, retail executives claimed that the cyberattack had been “extensive”, and that the business could take some time to fully fix its impact.

Earlier today, it was reported that M&S closed some of the programmes its staff used to log into its internal IT systems when working outside of the office.

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