London Drugs stores remain closed for 5th straight day, phone lines operating

London Drugs stores in Western Canada remained closed Thursday due to a "cybersecurity incident," marking the fifth straight day of closures.

In an afternoon update, the company said stores remain closed while it "continues to rebuild infrastructure" after detecting the cyberattack on Sunday. London Drugs said it's working with "third-party cybersecurity experts."

"The impact of the incident on operations has been significant, and the restoration process is rigorous. There are billions of lines of data and code to review," the company's statement said, without providing an estimated time of reopening. "Our teams have been working around the clock and we are seeing progress in our restoration."

Earlier in the week, London Drugs said personal data may have been compromised in the incident. Thursday's update, however, said there was "no evidence of any customer databases being compromised, including (its) pharmacy patients and LDExtras members." If the ongoing investigation determines otherwise, individuals will be notified by the company in accordance with privacy laws.

London Drugs abruptly closed all locations in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba on Sunday.

Phone lines to the stores were out of service Monday as part of the investigation into the incident, but were restored Wednesday afternoon. The company also said Canada Post offices located within the stores were open and "accessible." Pharmacies were open to help with emergency prescriptions and other urgent needs. 

"We are determining if we can reopen with partial services in order to take care of customers sooner, particularly our pharmacy customers," Clint Mahlman, London Drugs president, said in Thursday's statement.

"The outpouring of customer and supplier support and their understanding that has been shown to all of us at London Drugs is so appreciated as we work to reopen from this cyber security incident in a methodical, safe and responsible way, that protects all customers and our London Drugs community."

Provincial staff change passwords

The day after London Drugs locations closed, provincial employees received an email or memo directing them to change their passwords immediately. The Office of the Chief Information Officer confirmed the urgent requests began rolling out government-wide on Monday. 

"The OCIO is taking preventive measures to safeguard government data and systems," an OCIO statement sent to CTV News Vancouver said. "As a security precaution … password length has increased from 10 to 14 characters."

David Shipley, CEO of Beauceron Security, told CTV News senior levels of government need to take data breaches more seriously, adding the B.C. government's step of having employees change their passwords "could be a very smart move."

"A lot of people reuse passwords. So if London Drugs has a lot of B.C. government employees (as customers) then very smart to try and contain the risk," Shipley said. "A lot of people working in B.C. government go to London Drugs, could be a lot of passwords in the wind … someone made a pretty gutsy call to be proactive."

London Drugs has more than 80 stores across Western Canada. 

With files from CTV News' Penny Daflos and Andrew Johnson