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Home > Thought Leadership > Cyber Security > When Trust Breaks: What M&S, Harrods, and Co-op Just Taught Us About Cyber Resilience 

When Trust Breaks: What M&S, Harrods, and Co-op Just Taught Us About Cyber Resilience 

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Cyberattack impact on M&S, Harrods and Co-op

In just two weeks, three of the UK’s most recognisable retailers, Marks & Spencer, Harrods, and Co-op were hit by serious cyberattacks. These incidents weren’t isolated glitches or opportunistic hacks. They were part of a coordinated campaign, likely orchestrated by the threat group known as Scattered Spider.

These UK retail cyberattacks are a stark warning to every regulated organisation, not just in retail, but across sectors like construction, healthcare, education, and defence. The vulnerabilities exploited here are not sector-specific. Any business with a help desk, distributed systems, or customer data is in the firing line.

A Coordinated Wake-Up Call for UK Businesses

Here’s what happened:

  • M&S: A ransomware attack disrupted online operations, paused click-and-collect, knocked out contactless payments, and wiped £650 million off the company’s market value.

  • Co-op: Hackers used social engineering to fool the help desk and gain access. The response included halting remote access and pausing Teams recordings.

  • Harrods: Internal internet access was restricted as a precaution. Government agencies are now assisting with the investigation.

These are not just IT problems. They are operational resilience failures that put customer trust, revenue, and reputation at risk.

Why Compliance Alone Doesn’t Cut It

Too many organisations treat cybersecurity like a checklist: firewalls ticked, antivirus installed, GDPR box checked. But as the M&S cyber breach shows, compliance is not resilience.

At Assured Digital, we support organisations where uptime, compliance, and trust are non-negotiable. Our POL Framework: Prepare, Operate, Learn is built to turn cybersecurity into a continuous process, not a one-off policy.

The POL Framework

Prepare

  • Identify crown-jewel systems and critical data assets

  • Run phishing simulations and test help desk escalation protocols

  • Review real-world readiness against GDPR compliance and ISO standards

  • Train staff against human-centred attacks like those used by Scattered Spider

In Co-op’s case, the breach came not through a firewall, but a phone call. That’s where preparation failed, at the human layer.

Operate

  • Strengthen your escalation and decision-making playbooks

  • Assign clear roles for crisis leadership

  • Set up alternative infrastructure to maintain services

  • Communicate swiftly with staff and customers

M&S froze its online operations. Harrods cut off internal access. Without tested procedures, chaos compounds the breach.

Learn

  • Don’t stop at post-mortems. Run cross-team retrospectives

  • Feed insights back to execs and board-level risk reporting

  • Update cyber playbooks and retrain based on what actually happened

  • Share learnings across your sector and supply chain

What Should Business Leaders Do Now?

For Boards and Executive Teams:

  • Request an audit of your current incident response capabilities

  • Run a tabletop cyber drill, include execs and help desk leads

  • Review contracts with third-party vendors and support desks

  • Track cyber resilience alongside financial and operational KPIs

For CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs:

  • Check how easily privilege can escalate in your systems

  • Run simulations of phishing, VPN hijack, and Teams misuse

  • Ensure cyber playbooks include social engineering and non-technical threats

  • Align cyber response with data protection and AI governance strategies

This Isn’t Just Retail’s Problem

If you’re running a construction firm, managing a health trust, or providing IT for schools, your environment looks a lot like retail:

  • Distributed endpoints

  • Sensitive data flows

  • Time-critical operations

  • Patchy cyber training at the front line

The truth is: cybercriminals don’t care what you sell. They care how easy it is to get in, and how expensive it would be for you to go offline.

Assured Digital: Resilience Built Around Reality

We’re not here to sell fear. We’re here to build capability.

Assured Digital works with SMB and mid-market organisations across the UK to improve cyber readiness, regulatory compliance, and operational response through practical, human-led solutions, not just software and tick boxes.

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