Marks and Spencer Pension Suffered a Cyberattack in Connection With Capita

Members of the UK’s Marks and Spencer and Diageo pension schemes alerted the public that it lost customers’ personal data during a cyberattack.

Capita detected a breach in March and confirmed it in April, the M&S and Diageo pension funds were among hundreds of private-sector retirement plans which used Capita to endorse their pension management services.

Marks and Spencer Suffered Due to Capita Links

The M&S pension said the cyberattack at Capita in March may have impacted the personal data of a large number of members, including the majority of pensioners who had worked at the retailer.

Moreover, the firm’s partner (Capita)  is not confident that the threat actors gained access to the data. However, it deems it appropriate to act as if this is the case and cautions potential victims about the threats and risks.

Based on 2021 accounts, the M&S pension plan had 106,000 members with around 53,000 being pensioners. Trustees of the M&S pension plan refused to make remarks beyond the aforementioned on their website.

Meanwhile, Diageo declared that the data breach affected some of its 32,000 pension members. It reiterated that it is working closely with its partners to assess the full impact of the breach. To this effect Capita offered the firm complimentary membership to help detect when the hackers use the personal data they stole.

Free Identity Protection Services

A Diageo representative said they reported to those members to guarantee them that there is no lasting consequences to the Diageo Pension plan and that their benefits are safe.

Shortly after, The statements from Capita’s private sector clients come nearly two months after the researchers first caught a glimpse of a cyber incident. The researchers originally said last month that there was no evidence that the hackers compromised members’ data.

On Thursday, USS, the UK’s biggest private-sector pension plan, said it would offer free tickets to an identity protection service after their details were put at risk by the Capita hack. USS is a Capita client which last week proclaimed that 470,000 members’ details were at risk.