Page 14 - HW FEBRUARY 2022

hard news
Bunnings, Kings Plant Barn experience data breaches
Global scale retailer
reveals NZ plans
With construction at the site of Costco’s debut in New Zealand already well underway at Westgate in West Auckland, IKEA has now also shared further information about the location of its first store here.
Having already confirmed it would be in Auckland, late last year came news of an agreement for IKEA NZ to buy land at Sylvia Park, New Zealand’s biggest shopping centre, owned by NZX-listed Kiwi Property Group.
Mirja Viinanen, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer for IKEA New Zealand says: Since we announced our intention to enter
the market, the response from New Zealanders has been overwhelmingly positive. The signing of the Agreement for Sale and Purchase of Real Estate with Kiwi Property Group is an important step in making this a reality.
“We look forward to sharing more details of our plans and timings to bring IKEA to the many New Zealanders in the near future.”
Clive Mackenzie, CEO of Kiwi Property Group says of the deal: “We’re excited to be taking this important
step towards having an IKEA presence at Sylvia Park. Our goal is to reinforce the centre’s standing as New Zealand’s leading shopping destination, attracting customers from around the country. We look forward to working together with IKEA New Zealand.”
In terms of IKEA’s choice of site, it’s noteworthy that Sylvia Park was Kiwi Property’s top performing asset in December, achieving sales growth of 11.7%, while its other key mixed-use shopping centres, LynnMall and Te Awa The Base, also recorded sales growth of 7.3% and 4.5% respectively in the final month of 2021.
http://ikea.co.nz/ www.kiwiproperty.com
AS REVEALED IN January, Bunnings’ Drive & Collect booking platform experienced a data breach pre-Christmas that exposed some Australian and New Zealand customers’ personal details.
It was subsequently reported that the same data breach affected Kings Plant Barn click & collect customers, among some 3.7 million consumers globally.
Both Bunnings and King’s Plant Barn use the same appointment scheduling tool from Flexbooker and on the afternoon of 23 December, Flexbooker’s account on Amazon’s AWS servers was “compromised”, resulting in a temporary outage.
As part of the incident, Flexbooker’s system data storage was accessed and downloaded.
The downloaded data in question included some customers’ personal information – first and last names, email addresses, and phone numbers, says Flexbooker – but passwords are encrypted, and the encryption key was not accessed or downloaded.
No payment-related information is required in Bunnings’ Drive & Collect system and was therefore not at risk.
Leah Balter, Bunnings’ Chief Information Officer, commented on the
incident in January: “We are aware of a data security breach experienced by one of our third party booking providers, which may include the data of some of our customers across Australia and New Zealand who have booked a timeslot when utilising our Drive & Collect service.
“We’re continuing to work with
the third party provider to further understand the details of how this breach occurred, and the processes being put in place to correct it and we’re reaching out directly to any customers whose name or email address may have been accessed.”
Flexbooker has also confirmed that the vulnerability giving rise to the breach has now been contained.
Bunnings’ response in New Zealand to this breach includes the following advice for customers: “Customers can be assured that passwords, credit card information and mobile numbers are not required to be entered into Flexbooker, and we are confident that none of these categories of customer data have been compromised.
“As a precaution, we encourage our customers to be cautious of any unusual activity in their email accounts, and to regularly change passwords to enhance online safety.”
12 NZHJ | FEBRUARY 2022
MORE AT www.hardwarejournal.co.nz