Cyberattack forces Jaguar Land Rover to tell staff to stay at home

A cyberattack on the British multinational Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has forced the luxury car manufacturer to tell factory workers to stay at home until at least Tuesday.

Operations at the company’s production and retail facilities were “severely disrupted” by a cyber incident affecting JLR’s global IT systems, the company announced earlier this week.

As reported by the Liverpool Echo, staff have been stood down from reporting to work on Friday and Monday. JLR has said the shutdown was the result of the company itself proactively taking down its systems to mitigate the impact of the attack.

In its initial statement, JLR said it was “working at pace to restart our global applications in a controlled manner. At this stage there is no evidence any customer data has been stolen but our retail and production activities have been severely disrupted.”

The nature of the incident has not yet been disclosed. A cluster of English-speaking cybercriminals have claimed responsibility on the Telegram messaging app, while providing what they have claimed is data obtained from JLR’s internal systems.

Britain’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, has confirmed that JLR reported a data breach incident. 

JLR is the latest in a range of British household names to be affected by a cyber incident. Retailers Marks & Spencer, the Co-op and the London-based luxury store Harrods all reported attacks earlier this year that were similarly claimed by English-speaking hackers.

Earlier this year, the National Crime Agency arrested four individuals — one woman and three men — on suspicion of involvement in those ransomware attacks on the retail sector. All four have since been bailed.

JLR reported revenues of £28.99 billion ($38.75 billion) last year and employs more than 39,000 people worldwide. Its pre-tax profits dropped by 49% in the second quarter of this year, partially due to a pause in exports to the United States amid U.S. tariffs.