Sports Direct employees' personal details may have been put at risk in a data breach, according to The Register,although the retailer had allegedly not informed its 30,000-strong workforce about the incident.
A hacker or hackers broke into the company's systems last September using a security hole in Sports Direct's staff portal, according to the publication, which broke the story.It reported that the attackers took advantage of a vulnerability in Sport Direct's DNN platform, which had not been updated to include the latest security patch.
Bosses only found out about the breach in December, The Register said.
The details said to have been stolen include the names, emails and postal addresses of employees working at the sporting goods retailer, but it's unclear what the hackers have done with the data.
According to the ICO, Sports Direct has advised it of the hack and it will be "making enquiries" into how the attack occurred.
A spokesman for Sports Direct said in a statement: "We cannot comment on operational matters in relation to cybersecurity for obvious reasons. However, it is our policy to continually upgrade and improve our systems, and where appropriate we keep the relevant authorities informed."
Dr Jamie Graves, CEO at Zonefox said the way Sports Direct dealt with the breach is not an advisable approach.
"The waySportsDirecthas handled their data breach last year is a perfect example of how not to deal with a cyber attack,"Graves said. "With the looming EU GDPR regulations stating companies must declare a data breach within 72 hours or they will face severe fines, a lot of learning must be done by businesses on how they deal with a breach.
"They have said they filed a report with the ICO, but how quickly that happened has not been disclosed," he added. "This is a classic case of an avoidable breach; an unpatched system with unencrypted details."
