11:21 am, October 22, 2025
The JLR hack cost the UK an estimated £1.9bn, making it the most most economically damaging cyberattack in British history.
That is according to a new report from the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC), which has estimated that the incident had a knock-on effect on a staggering 5,000 businesses across the country.
The non-profit organisation estimates that more than half of the financial impact will have been felt by JLR itself, due to lost earnings and money spent on recovery.
That would place the total cost to the carmaker at an eye-watering £950m, at the very least. To make matters worse, the CMC does not expect to see a full recovery for January.
The group has now categorised the hack as a category three incident, based on its scale where a category five is the most severe. Recent cyber attacks on UK retailers, such as M&S and the Co-op, were deemed category two incidents.
Experts say the latest news shows the importance of firm’s keeping themselves protected from digital criminals with the potential to wreak havoc.
Ciaran Martin, chair of the CMC’s technical committee, said: ‘With a cost of nearly £2bn, 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.’
Car Dealer first reported on the incident at the start of September when a ‘global IT issue’ prevented dealers from registering cars on new plate day.
JLR soon confirmed that it had fallen victim to a hack, with production then ground to a halt across UK factories for the next five weeks.
The incident also led to warnings from suppliers that they could collapse without trading rapidly resuming or financial support.
Production has now resumed and JLR is continuing its ‘phased restart’ of operations.
