UPDATE: JLR to phase in production after hack

UPDATE: This story was updated on Thursday 2 October.

Following a cyberattack last month, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has said it will resume phased manufacturing operations in the coming days after financial support in the form of a £1.5 billion ($A3.0 billion) loan guarantee to secure funding was promised by the British Government.

The new funding will initially be aimed at supporting JLR’s supply chain crippled in the wake of the production shutdown precipitated by the hack.

Following the loan guarantee announcement, shares in JLR’s owner, Tata Motors – which is part of Indian conglomerate Tata Group – rose by nearly 2.0 per cent. But it is not known if Tata Motors has contributed to JLR’s cyberattack financial support.

Before the attack JLR had outsourced a large portion of its IT and cybersecurity to Tata IT arm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

TCS run many of JLR’s key computer systems and according to some sources were the point of intrusion for the breach.

Ironically, now TCS is a major part of the response with its employees working to address the intrusion that crippled JLR’s production.

JLR has informed suppliers that some systems were back online including those that control the global supply of parts and the financial system that manages wholesale vehicle sales.

It also said its capacity to process invoices had increased.

The iconic British manufacturer had already struggled in 2025 under the weight of US tariffs and other issues that according to publication Automotive News Europe resulted in ratings agency Moody’s affirming the automaker’s Ba1 corporate family rating but revised its outlook to negative from positive.

“The Ba1 rating reflects that it will likely withstand the impact of the cyber incident,” said Moody assistant vice president and analyst Sweta Patodia.

“The outlook-change to negative from positive reflects our view that a full recovery in credit metrics will likely take several months.”

Automotive News Europe reported the breach was the latest in a string of cyber and ransomware attacks targeting companies around the world.

In Britain, household names including Marks & Spencer and the Co-op Group have fallen victim to increasingly sophisticated breaches.

Experts in the field, however, say more can be done to stop cyberattacks before they happen.

“I believe that every cybersecurity attack could be detected by putting the right monitoring tools in place,” said Upstream Security chief executive officer Yoav Levy

“It is preventable. It’s a matter of resources and investment.”

While he was speaking in general terms and not specifically about the situation at JLR, Mr Levy said that specialists in his field have detected and mitigated “far more complex attacks than this one”.

“Cybersecurity is like a cat and mouse game that needs to be an ongoing investment because a single cybersecurity incident creates billions of dollars in impact,” he concluded.

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