No indication of Irish customers affected in JD Wetherspoon breach

Pro
(Image: Drinks Industry Ireland)

4 December 2015

UK pub chain JD Wetherspoons has confirmed that it has been the subject of a data breach in which customer and staff data was compromised. It described the breach a “criminal attack”.

The company has said that it has written to those affected, engaged “a leading cyber security specialist to conduct a full forensic investigation into the breach,” and notified the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) which regulates data protection in the UK, assuring it of full cooperation.

The company owns and operates three sites in Ireland, Blanchardstown, Swords and Cork.

The PR firm representing JD Wetherspoon, Gershon Media Relations, told TechPro investigations were still ongoing and that they could not confirm whether Irish customers had been affected.

“We apologise wholeheartedly to customers and staff who have been affected,” said John Hutson, chief executive, JD Wetherspoon. “Unfortunately, hacking is becoming more and more sophisticated and widespread. We are determined to respond to this by increasing our efforts and investment in security and will be doing everything possible to prevent a recurrence.”

It is thought that up to 600,000 customer records could be affected.

The company said in a statement that for “all customers, no financial data was involved in the hacking and no passwords were obtained for any customers”.

It went on to clarify, “For a tiny minority of 100 customers, who purchased Wetherspoon vouchers online before August 2014, extremely limited credit/debit card details were accessed.”

“Only the last four digits of the card numbers were obtained, since the remaining digits were not stored in the database.”

The company emailed potentially affected customers on 3 December, with links to detailed information about the incident, its extent and instructions as to what to do.

 

 

TechCentral Reporters

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