More and more Coop stores can be opened – but there is still much to be done

Stores are closed since Friday night. The reason is a hacker attack on the American company Kaseya, which supplies Visma Esscom with software, which, in turn, provides Coop and other Swedish companies with cash solutions.

There is a significant amount of work underway within both Coop and the fuel company Shell, which was also affected, to get the cash registers back working, but it will take time. In short, it’s a matter of technicians having to visit each affected store and reinstall the systems on each individual payment to get around the lock caused by the attack.

– We are working around the clock to update the systems, says Tarek Belkaid, Coop’s press spokesman.

According to him, chain stores have time With about a hundred stores on Monday they can now open as usual. A number of other stores have also managed to stay open thanks to the Coop payment app, which is working despite IT issues.

It’s going in the right direction, according to Tarek Belguid, but there is still a lot of work to do. On Tuesday morning, more than half of the chain’s 800 stores still had to close.

– At some point during the day, there will be more stores open than there are closed ones, he says without being able to give an exact number on how many are still affected.

He also has no expectations When technicians have reached all affected stores.

– We work around the clock, but it’s a logistical job to do. You have to update the cash coins and store them in the store. Tarek Belkaid says there are a lot of people working to get this done as quickly as possible.

Despite the fact that it was a suspected Russian hacker group that carried out the attack on an American company, Coop chose to report the incident to the police in Sweden.

– For us, it is important to do this because we are affected, Tarek Belkaid answers the question if he thinks the report can lead to anything.

SJ also had problems over the weekend With cash registers on board their trains as a result of a pirate attack. But already on Sunday afternoon, the state railway company has corrected the errors and passengers can shop as usual again.

For the fuel company Shell, which has the same supplier of cash register systems, the procedures took longer.

– The first stores that I reinstall takes longer because you want to make sure and make sure that everything is going as it should, but it is moving forward. Slowly but surely, there will be more and more stores open, says Erica Samuelsson, CIO of St1, which owns most of Shell’s operations in Sweden.

Its last number is that six Shell stores have been repaired so far and have been able to open after the cash crash. In total, about 50 stores were affected by the hacker attack.

The article has been updated.

Read also: Coop CEO about the attack

Read also: Finansinspektionen in an interview with Coops Bank