WH Smith Staff Data Hit By Cyber-attack

High Street retailer WH Smith says some of its staff data has been the target of a cyber-attack.

It said the incident had led to the access to some company data, including that of current and former employees.

However, its website, customer accounts and customer databases are not affected, the firm said.

WH Smith said it had launched an investigation and had told the relevant authorities of the incident.

"WH Smith takes the issue of cyber security extremely seriously and investigations into the incident are ongoing," it said.

"We are notifying all affected colleagues and have put measures in place to support them."

It added: "There has been no impact on the trading activities of the group. Our website, customer accounts and underlying customer databases are on separate systems that are unaffected by this incident."

The attack has hit UK staff data including names, addresses, National Insurance numbers and dates of birth.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), a watchdog which investigates data breaches, has been contacted for comment.

This year has already seen two cyber-attacks on high-profile UK companies.

In January, Royal Mail was hit by a Russian linked ransomware attack that caused severe disruption to overseas deliveries for several weeks.

That same month sportswear chain JD Sports said that it had been targeted by a cyber-attack which could have put data relating to 10 million customers at risk.

In April last year, online greeting card company Funky Pigeon, which is owned by WH Smith, was hit by a cyber-attack that left it unable to process orders for several days.