Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. denied a UK media report that said apparel retailer Marks & Spencer ditched the Indian IT outsourcing giant, accused of being at fault for its devastating cyberattack earlier this year.
M&S, which lost an estimated GBP 300 million from the hack, ended a long-running contract with TCS to operate its technology helpdesk in July, The Telegraph newspaper reported.
"The report published by The Telegraph is misleading, with factual inaccuracies including the size of the contract and the continuity of TCS's work for Marks & Spencer (M&S)," the IT company said in a statement late Sunday.
TCS claimed the service desk contract with M&S followed a regular competitive tender process initiated in January, with the retailer opting to proceed with other partners much before the cyber incident in April. "These matters are hence clearly unrelated."
"The commercial aspect of the service desk area also represents an insignificant part of TCS's overall engagement with M&S. TCS continues to work on numerous other areas, in its role as a strategic partner for M&S and is proud of this longstanding partnership," the statement said.
As per The Telegraph report, the hackers, from a group called 'Scattered Spider', are said to have gained access to M&S’s systems through “social engineering”, where hackers call technology desk helplines and impersonate executives to get their passwords reset.
In July, Marks & Spencer Chairman Archie Norman told British lawmakers that hackers had used "sophisticated impersonation" to gain entry "involving a third party".
Shortly after the incident, TCS held an internal investigation into whether its technology helpdesk had acted as a gateway for hackers to access M&S’s systems. It later said it had found no fault, the newspaper reported.
In its statement, the Mumbai-headquartered IT company clarified that it conducted a scan of its own networks and systems after the cyber incident and concluded that the vulnerabilities did not originate from there. "TCS does not provide cybersecurity services to M&S. This is a service that is provided by another partner," the statement said.
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