By David Long
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has suffered a major cyber-attack that has “severely disrupted” its vehicle production, including operations at its two principal UK manufacturing plants.
The British carmaker, owned by India’s Tata Motors, said it had acted immediately to contain the attack and is working urgently to restore its systems and resume output. The company confirmed that its retail business has also been badly affected at a peak period for new vehicle registrations but stressed that there was no evidence of customer data being compromised.
The breach began on Sunday, just before the launch of the new batch of registration plates on 1 September. According to the BBC, the hack was detected while still in progress, prompting JLR to shut down its IT systems to minimise further damage.
At the Halewood plant in Merseyside, workers were notified by email early Monday not to report to work, while some who had already arrived were sent home, the Liverpool Echo reported. Staff at the company’s other major site in Solihull faced a similar situation as production was also halted there.
In a statement, JLR said: “We took immediate action to mitigate its impact by proactively shutting down our systems. We are now working at pace to restart our global applications in a controlled manner.” It added: “At this stage, there is no evidence any customer data has been stolen but our retail and production activities have been severely disrupted.”
The identity of the perpetrators remains unknown, but the incident comes amid a wave of damaging cyber-attacks on leading UK retailers such as Marks & Spencer and the Co-op, where criminals attempted to extort money. While JLR’s official statement avoided explicitly calling the incident a cyber-attack, a disclosure by Tata Motors to the Bombay Stock Exchange referred to an “IT security incidence” that had caused “global” problems across the company.
The UK’s National Crime Agency confirmed awareness of the breach, stating: “We are aware of an incident impacting Jaguar Land Rover and are working with partners to better understand its impact.”
The disruption is particularly embarrassing for JLR, which only last year signed a five-year, £800 million contract with Tata Consultancy Services to boost cybersecurity and accelerate its digital transformation strategy.
Production shutdowns also mark another setback for the automaker, which recently reported a profit slump linked to rising costs, including the impact of US tariffs.
