A cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), owned by India’s Tata Motors, has cost the British economy around £1.9 bn ($2.55 bn) and affected more than 5,000 organisations, according to a new report by the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC).
The independent, not-for-profit body, which includes cybersecurity experts such as the former head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, said the losses could grow further if JLR faces delays in restoring production to pre-hack levels.
«This incident appears to be the most economically damaging cyber event to hit the UK, with the vast majority of the financial impact being due to the loss of manufacturing output at JLR and its suppliers,» the report stated.
The luxury carmaker began resuming production earlier this month following an almost six-week shutdown triggered by the August hack. JLR, which operates three plants in Britain producing about 1,000 vehicles per day, is expected to publish its financial results in November.
Analysts estimate JLR lost roughly £50 mln per week during the outage. To support its supplier network, the British government granted the firm a £1.5 bn loan guarantee in late September.
The CMC, which is funded by the insurance sector and evaluates the financial fallout of major cyber incidents in the UK, classified the JLR attack as a Category 3 systemic event on a five-point scale. The report noted that the estimate reflects severe disruption to JLR’s production, supply chain, and downstream operations, including dealerships.
Kursiv also reports that earlier this month Japan was facing a shortage of Asahi beer and other beverages as the country’s largest drinks producer struggled to recover from a major cyberattack that has disrupted operations for five days.
