Jaguar -land Rover production will only restart at the earliest after massive cyber attack -Jalopnik

The Jaguar Land Rover closure caused by a cyber attack at the beginning of September has a possible end date. Hopefully things will be sorted on September 24, Coach Reports that JLR has had a hard time finding a solution for his systems, so that factories slurice when the closure starts his third week. JLR not only loses to $ 5.8 million a day, but parts suppliers start to dismiss employees as a result of the work stop, according to the BBC. Some suppliers can even go bankrupt if the closure continues.

This is a smaller version of what we saw during the Pandemie. Although suppliers of large parts can endure such a storm, smaller ones, in particular specializing in parts for Jaguars of Land Rovers, may not be able, former Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer told the BBC.

“Some of them will go bankrupt. I would not be surprised at all to see bankruptcies.”
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“You like a closure in the first week or so. You wear those losses. But then you go to the second week, more information will be available – then you cut hard. So fired are already happening or are planned.”

The BBC also confirmed that a limited JLR supplier had already fired 40 people, almost half of the company. Others tell employees to stay at home, hoping to put them back to work as soon as JLR resumes production. Union and government officials ask for a leave program to pay employees and to help them make ends meet until the situation has been resolved and they can go back to work. This can be wise, because suppliers of the shared suppliers can further delay the JLR production, as we saw with the production of Toyota and Corvette during the pandemic.

The cyber attack started on 1 September. Fast action by the IT staff of JLR immediately closed its systems to keep their data safe, but such security measures also prevent employees from accessing systems they need to do their work, resulting in the continuous closure. Dealers and parts systems are also affected.

Since our original report, a hacker group that is known as “scattered lapsus $ hunters” has claimed the responsibility for the attack. This is the same group that affected the retailer Marks & Spencer last May. It claims to have used the same security error in SAP Netweaver to hack both companies. Software such as this runs at every level of a company, which explains how the entire company can be closed due to a hack in a single software application.

JLR’s website has the next explanation about the cyber attack at the top of the main page:

Since we became aware of the cyber incident, we have worked around the clock, together with CyberSecurity specialists from third parties, to restart our global applications in a controlled and safe way. As a result of our current investigation, we now believe that some data has been affected and that we inform the relevant supervisors. Our forensic research takes place in pace and we will contact everyone where necessary if we think their data has been influenced. We are very sorry for the continuous disruption that this incident causes and we will continue to update as the investigation progresses.

JLR had previously stated that “there is no evidence that customer data was stolen.” That seems to have changed as the research continued.