Production at Jaguar Land Rover has been “severely disrupted” by a cyber attack.
The British car maker said it was working “at pace” to restart production around the world “in a controlled manner”, after shutting down its systems when it noticed the attack.
Its retail activities have also been impacted but the company said it doesn’t have any evidence that “any customer data has been stolen”.
“In the fast-paced world of automotive manufacturing, a car is more than just steel and software,” Tim Grieveson, chief information security officer at ThingsRecon, told Sky News. “It is a web of hundreds of tier-1 and tier-2 suppliers, each with their own inherent risks.
“Data suggests every hour of downtime in the automotive sector could cost upwards of £1.6M.
“Every day of halted production means fewer cars to sell, while dealers are losing immediate income from being unable to register or deliver vehicles.”
Jaguar Land Rover is the UK’s latest major company to face a cyber incident, after M&S and other retailers had their operations disrupted.
M&S only resumed click and collect orders for clothing last month after it suffered a major attack on Easter weekend.
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Cyber security expert Harjinder Lallie previously told Sky News that one factor contributing to the explosion in cyber attacks around the world is a change in the business model for criminals.
“They moved to a model which we refer to as ‘ransomware-as-a-service’,” he said.
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“I’ll say to you: ‘You can use my very, very powerful tools to conduct the attack, and you can keep 80% of everything you collect, as long as I get 20% of it,'” explained Dr Lallie.
That means wannabe-hackers “no longer need the technical know-how” to launch an attack, he said.
