Stores owned by shopping chain SPAR located in the North of England have been badly affected by a major cyberattack on their systems.

SPAR has been severely affected following the “online attack” with staff being unable to accept card payments as well as being locked out of emails and wider systems.

The outage, which initially took place on Sunday, also forced the closure of 330 SPAR stores.

At this stage it remains unclear if customer data has been compromised and accessed by the hackers.

Commenting on the attack, a spokesperson from James Hall & Company – who owns SPAR – said that they were “working to resolve this situation as quickly as possible” and that the hack was “not affecting SPAR UK as a whole.”

“James Hall & Company are currently aware of an online attack on its IT system. This has not affected all SPAR stores across the North of England, but a number have been impacted over the past 24 hours and we are working to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.

“It is currently impacting stores’ ability to process card payments meaning that a number of SPAR stores are currently closed to shoppers or only taking cash payments,” the spokesperson added.

The organisation was originally founded in the Netherlands and is currently one of the world’s largest food retailers.

It has more than 2,500 stores in the UK, with hundreds located in Scotland, that employ about 40,000 people and boast an annual turnover of more than £3bn.

A spokesman at the Information Commissioner’s Office said that the organisation was “aware of reports regarding an incident affecting SPAR stores and we will be making enquiries.”

Jamie Akhtar, the CEO, and co-founder of CyberSmart, said that the attack is a “perfect illustration” of how quickly the consequences a cyberattack can spread throughout a supply chain.

“SPAR’s franchise model means that hundreds of small businesses share the same systems, meaning an attack on one quickly becomes an attack on all,” Akhtar said.

“We’re increasingly seeing cybercriminals use these tactics to target large businesses – some 80% of attacks now begin in the supply chain. After all, why attack the large corporation directly when you can target smaller (and often less secure) subsidiaries and suppliers and achieve the same result?” he said.

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Brian Higgins, security specialist at Comparitech, added: “This looks like a supply chain attack at first glance. It’s very difficult to ensure that every link in the chain has appropriate Cyber Security measures in place and it only takes one vulnerable point to allow criminals into a network.

“Once they’re in, the knock-on effects can be catastrophic. The timing might also be indicative of a planned attack as most retailers don’t run a full back-office service at weekends.

“I’m sure there will be a full investigation, but it can often be counterproductive to speculate on motive etc. during an ongoing incident.”

It appears that large supermarket chains are becoming a prime target for cybercriminals, after news last month of a hack attempt on retail giant Tesco.

The firm had to apologise after an attempted hack caused major disruptions to shoppers, taking down website systems and preventing users from accessing website services.

Customers were unable to order groceries, interact with their online orders or track previous deliveries.

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