Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The boss of Marks and Spencer told shoppers on Friday that the retailer was working \u201cday and night\u201d to fully restore its operations and \u201cget things back to normal as quickly as possible\u201d following a cyber attack that started a fortnight ago and has wiped more than \u00a3600mn off its value.This is the second time in a matter of days that chief executive Stuart Machin has attempted to reassure customers. M&S first disclosed last Tuesday that its systems had been compromised and has been unable to accept online orders since last Friday. A police investigation has been launched.The retailer was the first household name to be targeted by cyber criminals just days before the Co-op and luxury department store Harrods were also forced to shut down some IT systems and restrict internet access to fend off similar attacks.\u00a0The incidents have highlighted the vulnerability of the UK\u2019s retail sector to digital threats and have prompted concerns that retailers could be the target of a co-ordinated attack.\u00a0Toby Lewis, head of threat analysis at Darktrace, said \u201cwe shouldn\u2019t rule out that the three incidents are coincidence\u201d. A supplier or technology that all three chains had in common might also have been breached, he said.On Thursday night Richard Horne, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, warned that \u201cthe disruption caused by the recent incidents\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009are naturally a cause for concern\u201d and \u201cshould act as a wake-up call to all organisations\u201d.The Co-op said it was \u201cworking hard to reduce any disruption\u201d but was not asking its customers to do anything differently. Harrods said all of its stores were open as normal and shoppers could continue to buy goods online.Some cyber security experts believe that large retailers represent an attractive target for hackers, more so than other sectors.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cCyber criminals are generally opportunistic,\u201d said Rafe Pilling, threat intelligence director at Secureworks. \u201cThey pursue targets that they can gain easier access to. Retailers generally don\u2019t prioritise cyber security in the same way the regulated industries do, and there are more opportunities to target companies in retail and hospitality, manufacturing, and healthcare.\u201dResearch by law firm Irwin Mitchell in 2024 revealed that UK retailers were showing signs of cyber security apathy, with FTSE 100 retailers referencing \u201ccyber security\u201d less frequently in their annual reports compared with other sectors, despite growing risks.According to the UK\u2019s Information Commissioner\u2019s Office, the sectors reporting the highest number of cyber security breaches in 2023 were finance, with 22 per cent of reported incidents; retail at 18 per cent; and education with 11 per cent.\u00a0Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, which represents the sector, said \u201ccyber attacks are a real risk for all businesses and are becoming increasingly sophisticated\u201d and \u201cretailers spend hundreds of millions every year to mitigate these risks and ensure they can continue to serve customers\u201dRetailers also had large customer databases rich with payment information, said Jamie Smith, global managing director of cyber security at S-RM, a consultancy that offers digital forensic services.Smith added that: \u201cThe real-time nature of retail operations means that any disruption can be catastrophic, and also very visible,\u201d creating \u201cgreater leverage for an attacker wanting to extort them\u201d.\u00a0Michael Yates, partner and head of cyber security at law firm Harbottle & Lewis, said hacking \u201ca well-known retail brand generates leverage\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009because the victim will want to avoid brand and reputational damage at all costs to stop eroding customer trust\u201d, adding: \u201cM&S is one of the most trusted brands in the country.\u201d\u00a0Even if retailers did not pay ransoms, he added, their mountain of data meant hackers could still profit from selling it on.\u00a0While M&S, the Co-op and Harrods are the latest retailers to suffer IT disruption, Christmas sales at supermarket chain Wm Morrisons were badly hurt by a cyber attack on technology provider Blue Yonder last year. Currys and JD Sports have also suffered attacks that breached customer data.M&S warned in its most recent annual report that the shift to hybrid working since the Covid-19 pandemic had made it more susceptible to cyber attacks, as well as the greater use of digital technology and cloud systems. Retailers\u2019 operations are also fragmented, spanning stores, and online and mobile networks. They also work with numerous suppliers, which all increase the risk of an attack, said S-RM\u2019s Smith. Many retailers still rely on legacy systems, he added, which cannot be taken offline without disrupting tills.\u00a0The all-encompassing nature of technology in businesses means that \u201cthrough a ransom attack, everything can very simply grind to a halt,\u201d said Darktrace\u2019s Lewis.George Glass, a cyber threat expert at Kroll, said the three incidents could be the work of Scattered Spider, a hacking group that has conducted similar actions in the past, and has been linked to M&S.\u00a0Scattered Spider, typically works with ransomware groups such as DragonForce or RansomHub, which can help orchestrate the data leaks if ransom negotiations prove fruitless for cyber criminals.\u00a0Scattered Spider\u2019s profile was somewhat unusual, said Secureworks\u2019s Pilling. The group is amorphous, with known members tending to be male, and as young as 14 or 15. But crucially they were also English speaking and tended to be based in the west, he added. \u201cThat\u2019s an unusual thing for cyber crime groups \u2014 many of them are outside of western jurisdictions, and that\u2019s how they get away with things long term.\u201d\u00a0While the group\u2019s motivations are ultimately to make money from a hack, \u201cthere\u2019s just a big kudos within the [hacking] community element, so they do it for bragging rights almost\u201d, Pilling added.\u00a0\u00a0Unlike groups that rely on sophisticated techniques, Scattered Spider \u201care very good at getting on the phone to people, talking them into revealing credentials or resetting password; they understand business processes well and so they\u2019re very good at manipulating people\u201d, he added. Darktrace\u2019s Lewis believed it would take M&S \u201cmonths\u201d to fully restore the impact of the attack, as it had to strike a balance between swiftly turning the systems back to serve customers, and risking moving too quickly if the malware was still present in its systems. He added that when there had been an attack \u201cyou often only see the symptoms\u201d.Additional reporting by Kieran Smith in London<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The boss of Marks and Spencer told shoppers on Friday that the retailer was working \u201cday and night\u201d to fully restore its operations and \u201cget things back to normal as quickly as possible\u201d following a cyber attack that started a fortnight ago and has<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-298949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}