Christie's Back Online after 10-Day Tech Issue
May 21, 24
(IDEX Online) - Christie's says its website and app are now functioning again after they were hit by a 10-day outage during its busiest period of the year.
The auction house was forced to extend five online-only sales, postpone its Rare Watches Live Auction and accept only live bids at its Only Watch charity auction.
The website went down on 9 May 9 due to what Christie's described as a "technology security issue".
Visitors were greeted with a message that read: "We apologise that our website is currently offline. We are working to resolve this as soon as possible and regret any inconvenience."
Guillaume Cerutti, Christie's CEO, said in a statement (on Sunday 19 May) that the website and app had been restored with full functionality.
There was no explanation as to what happened, or whether it was a hack or a cyberattack.
The outage appears to have been timed to hit Christie's New York spring art auctions, when lots worth $850m were due to go under the hammer.
Pic courtesy Christie's of its postponed Rare Watches Auction in Geneva.