Christie’s postponed its watch auction scheduled for today after experiencing what it called a “technology security issue,” which has disabled the auction house’s website since last week.
At press time, visitors to christies.com would get either the message “This site can’t be reached” or one that said, “We apologize that our full website is currently offline. We are looking to resolve this as soon as possible and regret any inconvenience.” That redirect has reportedly been in place since Thursday.
Christie’s Rare Watches auction in Geneva, originally slated for May 13, was rescheduled for May 14. The firm said its other eight live auctions scheduled for this week in New York and Geneva will take place as planned.
CEO Guillaume Cerutti said in a statement, “I want to assure you that we are managing this incident according to our well-established protocols and practices, with the support of additional experts. This included among other things the proactive protection of our main website by taking it offline.”
The statement didn’t say anything about who was behind the hack or whether any client information had been compromised.
Christie’s isn’t the only jewelry company to contend with cybersecurity issues. Hong Kong–based jewelry brand Luk Fook Holdings recently announced that somebody on the so-called dark web was selling compromised consumer data from the company. Luk Fook said it’s investigating the incident, and has so far not been able to confirm any breach.
JCK has tips on how to avoid being a victim of cybercrime here.
(Photo courtesy of Christie’s)
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