Counting The Cost – The Impact of the JLR Cyberattack

David Bailey, Professor of Business Economics - Birmingham Business School 
 
"The cost dwarfs any previous known data breach" - so says a recent report on the impact of the cyber-attack on JLR. The attack has been rated as the most financially damaging cyber incident ever in the UK, with the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) estimating the UK-wide impact at £1.9 billion, although this could top some £2.1bn.
Recall that the attack caused severe disruption across JLR’s UK manufacturing operations and its supply chain, halting vehicle production for five weeks and triggering widespread losses for suppliers and dealerships.
The event, which affected over 5,000 UK organisations, was given a Category 3 rating on the CMC’s five-point scale.
 
This category denotes an incident with losses between £1 billion and £5 billion and significant financial effects on more than 2,700 organisations. The CMC noted that the JLR incident was concentrated on a single organisation, with systemic impact...