# JLR Hack UK's Costliest Ever, Hitting Economy with £1.9bn Loss

The recent cyber-attack on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has been deemed the most economically damaging incident to hit the UK, according to an independent body known as the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC). The report, released on October 22, 2025, estimated that the attack caused a UK financial impact of £1.9 billion ($2.55 billion) and affected over 5000 UK organizations.

## A Systemic Cyber Event

The CMC, which was launched in February 2025 to measure the impact of cyber incidents, considered the substantial disruption to JLR's manufacturing, its multi-tier manufacturing supply chain, and downstream organizations, including car dealerships. The "vast majority of the financial impact" was due to the loss of manufacturing output at JLR and its suppliers.

## Disruption and Consequences

The incident impacted JLR's internal IT environment leading to an IT shutdown and a halt in global manufacturing operations, including its major UK plants at Solihull, Halewood, and Wolverhampton. Production lines were halted for several weeks, dealer systems were intermittently unavailable, and suppliers faced cancelled or delayed orders, with uncertainty about future order volumes.

## The Cost of the Attack

The CMC analysts used a range of six metrics to evaluate the total cost of the cyber incident, including business interruption losses, incident response costs, IT rebuild and recovery costs, and supply chain business interruption costs. They then estimated the number of people affected by the incident and categorized each incident based on its total cost and the total number of people affected.

## Category 3 Systemic Event

The JLR hack was ranked as a Category 3 systemic event on the five-point CMC scale, which indicates a highly severe impact on the economy and society.

## Experts Weigh In

Jake Moore, a global cybersecurity advisor at ESET, commented that the attack illustrated the vulnerability of the supply chain. "The mega costly loss of the JLR hack and the widespread disruption across the large number of associated businesses just shows on a worldwide stage how a single incident can knock on through interconnected systems and impact greatly far beyond the original target."

Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at ImmuniWeb, believes that the estimated £1.9 billion loss may be just a small fraction of the total financial loss. "The estimated £1.9bn loss may be just a small fraction of the total financial loss, merely representing already incurred and now-foreseeable losses that can be quantified."

Kolochenko also highlighted that the combined cost of several cyber-attacks targeting the same country or industry may be superior to the sum of its parts. "What is even more alarming here is a doom-like scenario, when a hostile nation state hackers attack simultaneously 20 or 30 British companies of a similar size and national importance as JLR, including providers of critical national infrastructure."

## The Need for Stronger Government Cybersecurity Oversight

Kolochenko advocated for companies of national importance to be "proactively audited by governmental agencies, setting cybersecurity and data protection compliance bar much higher than imposed by, say, UK GDPR or even the upcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill." He emphasized that recognizing cybersecurity as a strategic risk equal to financial or operational threats is essential for board members.

In conclusion, the JLR hack has highlighted the vulnerability of the supply chain and the need for stronger government cybersecurity oversight. The estimated £1.9 billion loss is just the beginning, and it's essential to take proactive measures to prevent similar incidents in the future.

## Photo Credits [Insert photo credits: Richard OD / Bk87 / Shutterstock.com]