Pinsent Masons has taken a lead role on the investigation into last year's data breach at Dixons Carphone, which attempted to "compromise" the payment cards of almost six million customers.

The law firm has been brought in to investigate the attempt to access financial information about Dixons Carphone customers from one of the processing systems of Currys PC World and Dixons Travel stores, which the company admitted to yesterday (13 June).

Pinsents is on Dixons Carphone's legal panel, which was put together in 2016 following the £3.6bn merger of Carphone Warehouse and Dixons Retail. Other firms on the roster include Addleshaw Goddard, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and DLA Piper.

The company said in a statement that it had warned all card companies affected by the breach at the time it was discovered in July 2017, but that they "have no evidence of any fraud on these cards as a result of this incident."

The company added that during the investigation it was found that 1.2m records containing names, addresses and email addresses was accessed, although the firms added that they "have no evidence that this information has left our systems or has resulted in any fraud at this stage."

Dixons Carphone chief executive Alex Baldock said: "We are extremely disappointed and sorry for any upset this may cause. The protection of our data has to be at the heart of our business, and we've fallen short here. We've taken action to close off this unauthorised access and though we have currently no evidence of fraud as a result of these incidents, we are taking this extremely seriously.

A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which is looking into the breach, said: "An incident involving Dixons Carphone has been reported to us and we are liaising with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Financial Conduct Authority and other relevant agencies to ascertain the details and impact on customers.

Dixons and Carphone Warehouse were advised by Linklaters and Osborne Clarke respectively on their 2014 merger.

Carphone Warehouse was fined £400,000 by the ICO in January of this year following another data breach in 2015 which allowed unauthorised access to the personal data of over three million customers and 1,000 employees.

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