London Drugs hacked

London Drugs hacked: London Drugs has temporarily closed all 80 stores in western Canada due to a cybersecurity incident. While London Drugs says their pharmacists are available for emergency help, reports from social media indicate spotty results.

London Drugs hacked

London Drugs closed their stores Sunday afternoon after noticing the problem. Staff at a downtown location today told me they haven’t been informed what is going on and all their systems were down. There were lots of staff at the door which made me wonder if London Drugs was able to contact their own employees to advise.

London Drugs updated their Facebook stating that at this time they have no reason to believe employee or customer data was impacted.

While London Drugs has updated their social media, their web site (as of noon PST) does not indicate the store closures. I have to wonder how safe it would be to use their online ordering system. Or if London Drugs has access to their own web site to update it.

Conspiracy theory already

Within 12 hours of the store closures there was a conspiracy theory about the hack. On the eve of #BoycottLoblaws, could Roblaws be the culprit? I don’t take the theory seriously but it is a great example of what your customers might think about a mysterious closure.

Disaster Recovery Lessons here

Small businesses can learn some disaster recovery lessons here. Do you have an offline way of contacting your employees in case of emergency? How often will update your employees? London Drugs has retained a PR firm to help them with this disaster, do you have a PR firm to help you?

Most important, how will you connect with your customers? How often?

More disaster recovery tips from my Disaster Recovery 2021 blog.

Update

Now London Drugs took down their phone system and advise customers with urgent pharmacy needs to visit the closed stores. London Drugs has put a teeny tiny banner on their web site advising of the store closures. That London Drugs is keeping their web site up for sales makes me think criminals hacked the pharmacy side of the business.