Who Expects Cyber Attack On Jaguar Land Rover To Lose The UK's Economy To IDR 42 Trillion

Defender OCTA. (Photo: Jaguar Land Rover)

JAKARTA Who would have thought that a cyberattack on an automotive manufacturer could shake the country's economy by tens of trillions of rupiah? That's what Britain experienced after a massive hack hit Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), a luxury car manufacturer owned by Tata Motors. The impact was so broad that the UK economy lost around 1.9 billion pounds, equivalent to Rp42 trillion, and affected more than 5,000 organizations.

A report from the Cyber Monitoring Center (CMC), an independent cybersecurity agency consisting of industry experts, called this incident the most economically damaging cyberattack in British history. Most of the losses are said to stem from the cessation of JLR manufacturing activity and the multi-level supply chain that supports its operations.

The Duration Of Attacks And Slow Handling

According to a Reuters report, quoted on Wednesday, October 23, JLR operates three factories in the UK and is capable of producing around 1,000 cars per day, forced to stop production activities for nearly six weeks since the hack in late August. As a result, analysts expect the company to lose around 50 million per week.

Although JLR had resumed operations in early October, CMC warned that the loss rate could continue to swell if the production recovery process did not go as planned.

To ease the burden on the affected supply chain, the British government intervened by providing loan guarantees of 1.5 billion to JLR at the end of last September.

Declared A Systemic Event

In CMC classification, JLR hacking is categorized as a "systemic event Category 3" of scale five, showing major disruption to manufacturing processes as well as distribution to dealers and suppliers at the lower level.

Until now, JLR refused to comment on the report. The company is scheduled to announce its financial statements in November.

JLR's case isn't the only one that hit a large British corporation this year. Previously, well-known retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) also experienced a major cyberattack that left his online service paralyzed for two months and caused a loss of around 300 million.

The series of events show how vulnerable the digital infrastructure of the British big industry is, even for a Jaguar Land Rover-class brand that is known to be tough on the highway but turns out to be immune in cyberspace.