The devastating cyber attack that crippled Jaguar Land Rover’s operations is the most expensive in British history “by some distance”, experts have found.
The Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) said an estimated £1.9bn bill for the incident reflected the “deep impact” it had with “extensive ripple effects through supply chains, logistics providers and local economies”.
Some 5,000 organisations were affected by the JLR cyber attack including affiliated showrooms and repair shops as well as thousands of small manufacturers supplying parts and materials.
It forced JLR to halt production on Sept 1, with the car giant unable to resume much of its operation until five weeks later.
The CMC said it believed the range of potential losses was between £1.6bn and £2.1bn but that could be higher if “operational technology has been significantly impacted or there are unexpected delays in bringing production back to pre-event levels”.
That makes it the most economically damaging incident of its kind to occur in the UK, the think tank said.
Prof Ciaran Martin, the former boss of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre who is now chairman of CMC’s technical committee, said: “With a cost of nearly £2bn, this incident looks to have been, by some distance, the single most financially damaging cyber event ever to hit the UK.
“That should make us all pause and think. Every organisation needs to identify the networks that matter to them and how to protect them better, and then plan for how they’d cope if the network gets disrupted.”
The JLR cyber attack was classed as “category three” on a scale of one to five in seriousness because of its financial cost coupled with the number of people and organisations it affected.
However, CMC said its impact was different to previous “systemic cyber events” such as the WannaCry ransomware attack, which affected the NHS, or the CrowdStrike global software meltdown because it showed how an attack on a single victim could trigger “systemic effects … indirectly through economic interdependencies”.
The Telegraph revealed this month that Russia is suspected of being behind the cyber attack on JLR.
The scale of the attack and the economic damage inflicted have raised suspicions that the hackers were acting on behalf of the Kremlin, with the ensuing temporary shutdown affecting some 200,000 workers around the world.
It caused financial havoc for thousands of small British firms that directly supply JLR as their biggest customer, prompting many to warn they risked going bust – leaving other carmakers in the lurch as well – unless the company restarted production soon.
The devastating cyber attack that crippled Jaguar Land Rover’s operations is the most expensive in British history “by some distance”, experts have found.
The Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) said an estimated £1.9bn bill for the incident reflected the “deep impact” it had with “extensive ripple effects through supply chains, logistics providers and local economies”.
Some 5,000 organisations were affected by the JLR cyber attack including affiliated showrooms and repair shops as well as thousands of small manufacturers supplying parts and materials.
It forced JLR to halt production on Sept 1, with the car giant unable to resume much of its operation until five weeks later.
The CMC said it believed the range of potential losses was between £1.6bn and £2.1bn but that could be higher if “operational technology has been significantly impacted or there are unexpected delays in bringing production back to pre-event levels”.
That makes it the most economically damaging incident of its kind to occur in the UK, the think tank said.
Prof Ciaran Martin, the former boss of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre who is now chairman of CMC’s technical committee, said: “With a cost of nearly £2bn, this incident looks to have been, by some distance, the single most financially damaging cyber event ever to hit the UK.
“That should make us all pause and think. Every organisation needs to identify the networks that matter to them and how to protect them better, and then plan for how they’d cope if the network gets disrupted.”
The JLR cyber attack was classed as “category three” on a scale of one to five in seriousness because of its financial cost coupled with the number of people and organisations it affected.
However, CMC said its impact was different to previous “systemic cyber events” such as the WannaCry ransomware attack, which affected the NHS, or the CrowdStrike global software meltdown because it showed how an attack on a single victim could trigger “systemic effects … indirectly through economic interdependencies”.
The Telegraph revealed this month that Russia is suspected of being behind the cyber attack on JLR.
The scale of the attack and the economic damage inflicted have raised suspicions that the hackers were acting on behalf of the Kremlin, with the ensuing temporary shutdown affecting some 200,000 workers around the world.
It caused financial havoc for thousands of small British firms that directly supply JLR as their biggest customer, prompting many to warn they risked going bust – leaving other carmakers in the lurch as well – unless the company restarted production soon.
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