Victoria’s Secret Shutters Website Over Security Incident

Victoria’s Secret’s website remained shut down Thursday (May 29) morning following a security incident.

“We have taken down our website and some in-store services as a precaution,” the apparel retailer said in a message posted to its website.

“Our team is working around the clock to fully restore operations. We appreciate your patience during this process. In the meantime, our Victoria’s Secret and PINK stores remain open and we look forward to serving you.”

The company’s decision to close down the website was reported on Wednesday evening (May 28) by Reuters, which noted that Victoria’s Secret had not revealed the nature of the incident or when it began.

The shutdown is part of a wave of recent cybersecurity incidents involving high-profile companies. For example, footwear company Adidas revealed last week that customer contact information had been stolen in a data breach.

And an attack last year on the cloud company Snowflake eventually snowballed to affect more than 160 of the world’s largest companies, among them AT&T, Santander Bank, Advance Auto Parts and Ticketmaster parent LiveNation.

As PYMNTS wrote earlier this week, incidents such as these have companies on high alert, paying close attention to vulnerabilities connected to third-party relationships.

“In 2023, just 15% of data breaches involved third parties such as vendors, service providers and platforms that handle customer or operational data,” that report said.

“Fast forward to last year, and the percentage of third parties involved in data breaches has now doubled to 30%, nearly one in three, a figure that presents a clear and alarming escalation.”

From IT services and cloud platforms to customer support tools and code libraries, third-party providers increasingly touch every part of a business’s operations.

As a recent Verizon cybersecurity report notes, this interdependence is not just a theoretical vulnerability but a practical one that can drive decisions around buying, building or partnering in security-critical industries such as financial services and payments.

For many companies, the equation is simple, PYMNTS added: More third-party integrations plus more human error can equal more opportunities for a breach to occur.

“In 2021, there were 400 data breach lawsuits filed,” Philip Yannella co-chair of the privacy, security and data protection practice at Blank Rome and the author of “Cyber Litigation: Data Breach, Data Privacy & Digital Rights,” 2025 edition, said in an interview with PYMNTS. “Last year, there were over 2,000.”

“Data breaches are always the biggest danger, particularly for financial institutions … We’re going to go through a period where we see more breaches — potentially more expensive breaches — until companies can get their arms around how to deal with them,” Yannella added. “If you’re a bank, you’ve got to worry quite a bit about your vendors.”