Jaguar Land Rover ‘severely disrupted’ by cybersecurity incident

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), the British multinational luxury car manufacturer, announced on Tuesday its operations were “severely disrupted” by what it described as a cybersecurity incident affecting its global IT systems.

Staff at the company's plant in Halewood, near Liverpool, were sent an email early on Monday morning and told not to report for work, according to the Liverpool Echo. The shutdown is expected to continue into Wednesday, the newspaper reported.

The attack has impacted both the company’s production facilities manufacturing cars and its retail outlets selling them to customers.

In a statement on the JLR website, the company confirmed being “impacted by a cyber incident” and said it “took immediate action to mitigate its impact by proactively shutting down our systems.”

The company added it was “working at pace to restart our global applications in a controlled manner. At this stage there is no evidence any customer data has been stolen but our retail and production activities have been severely disrupted.”

The nature of the incident has not been disclosed. JLR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

JLR reported revenues of £28.99 billion ($38.75 billion) last year and employs more than 39,000 people worldwide. Its pre-tax profits dropped by 49% in the second quarter of this year, partially due to a pause in exports to the United States amid U.S. tariffs.

The company is the latest in a range of British household names to be affected by a cyber incident. Retailers Marks & Spencer, the Co-op and the London-based luxury store Harrods all reported attacks earlier this year.

It follows the country’s foremost cybersecurity chief, Richard Horne, the head of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), warning the country was in general underestimating the risks from cyberattacks and failing to adequately prepare to respond to them.

What seems to be an increasingly exasperated NCSC called in June for the country to adopt a strategic policy agenda to tackle the growing risks, following years-long delays in the government bringing forward new cybersecurity legislation.