A cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has been identified as the UK’s most economically damaging hack.
The hack is estimated to have cost the country £1.9 billion.
Research from the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) indicates around 5,000 businesses nationwide have been hit by the fallout.
Its experts analysed the incident’s broad impact across the economy and supply chain.
JLR halted production at its UK factories for five weeks from September 1 after being targeted the previous day.
This disruption led to warnings from suppliers that many faced collapse without rapid trading resumption or financial aid.
Ciaran Martin, chair of the CMC’s technical committee, said: “With a cost of nearly £2 billion, 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, and then – as the National Cyber Security Centre said so forcefully last week – it’s time to act.
“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 CMC predicted that more than half of the cost will be shouldered by JLR itself due to lost earnings and money spent on its recovery.
The organisation added that it does not expect a full recovery from the incident until January 2026.
It said it categorised the hack as a category 3 incident, based on its scale where a category 5 is the most severe.
Recent cyber attacks on UK retailers, such as M&S and the Co-op, were deemed a category 2 incident.
JLR has the largest supply chain in the UK automotive sector, which employs around 120,000 people and is largely made up of small and medium-sized businesses.
In the aftermath of the attack on 31 August, ministers have been in contact daily with JLR and cyber experts.
Production restarted at the company’s Wolverhampton site earlier in October.
