Retailer Ahold Delhaize reports cybersecurity incident to Dutch police

By Charlotte Van Campenhout

AMSTERDAM, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Retailer Ahold Delhaize reported a cybersecurity incident to Dutch police on Monday after it detected suspicious activity in its infrastructure, the company said, adding it took some systems offline as ‌a ⁠precaution earlier this month.

Although only reported to the police on Monday, the incident coincided with a cyberattack in France that caused refrigerators and freezers at hundreds of stores to heat up to ​50 degrees ​Celsius (122 degrees ⁠Fahrenheit) overnight, sparking fires and spoiling food.

The Dutch National Cyber ​Security Centre said there ​was ⁠no reason to believe the incident in the Netherlands was directly linked to any cyberattacks in other countries.

Delhaize said its investigations found the suspicious activity had resulted from the "malicious actions of others", without specifying who might be responsible.

"Taking systems offline to help protect them was a precautionary measure that affected most of our brands across Europe and the United States. The investigation to date confirms this was the right decision", President and CEO Frans Muller said.

NO ONLINE ORDERS BEFORE THURSDAY

Earlier on Monday, Ahold Delhaize's Albert Heijn, the Netherlands' largest supermarket chain, said it would not resume online deliveries before Thursday at the earliest, extending to at least 11 days an outage caused by the cybersecurity incident.

Online accounts for about 10% of Albert Heijn sales.

While Albert Heijn's website was back online on Monday, the websites of Ahold Delhaize’s US chains remained offline, a week after the cyber incident forced the company to shut down some of its IT systems. Ahold Delhaize said it expected e-commerce services at its US brands to resume "in the coming days".

The US brands, which include Stop & Shop, Giant Food, Hannaford and Food Lion, collectively rank among the country’s largest food retailers. Deliveries at Belgian chain Delhaize resumed over the weekend.

Ahold Delhaize previously said that there was no evidence that any customer data had been stolen.

Physical stores of several chains have remained open, but have struggled with supplies as distribution channels were also affected.

(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout, Bart Meijer, Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Barbara Lewis)