Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has today announced that is has extended its production shutdown for a further week. A cyber attack earlier in the month affected the automotive manufacturer’s two main UK manufacturing sites – Halewood in Merseyside and Solihull in the West Midlands – where workers were told not to attend shifts after systems were taken offline.
This shutdown has now been extended with production now halted until at least 24 September as investigations continue and as the company works on a controlled restart of its global operations. Approximately 33,000 UK employees have been told to stay home during the pause, and the disruption is rippling out across the supply chain.
The luxury carmaker, owned by India’s Tata Motors, shut down its systems to contain the hack and a statement on the company’s website has stated: ‘We have taken this decision as our forensic investigation of the cyber incident continues, and as we consider the different stages of the controlled restart of our global operations, which will take time.’
There is concern about the financial impact of the stoppage on JLR’s British supply chain, which includes many smaller companies and supports 104,000 jobs across the country. The Unite trade union has warned of job losses and said government support would be needed given the lengthy stoppage.
Although The Telegraph reported that the production shutdown could last until November, JLR has said this was not its position.
JLR has acknowledged that ‘some data’ was affected by the breach, though it has not yet confirmed whether any customer or supplier data was compromised. The company has reported the issue to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office and is working with cyber security specialists to manage recovery efforts.
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