Husain Parvez
Published on: September 4, 2025
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has confirmed that a cyber incident has “severely disrupted” its manufacturing and retail operations, forcing the company to shut down IT systems across multiple sites.
In a statement on Tuesday, the carmaker said it had “proactively shut down our systems” and was “working at pace to restart our global applications in a controlled manner.” The company added that “at this stage there is no evidence any customer data has been stolen but our retail and production activities have been severely disrupted.”
The disruption has hit key sites, including the Halewood plant in Merseyside, where workers were told not to report for shifts early Monday morning, according to local reports. Dealers have also struggled to register vehicles during the UK’s busy new “75 plate” sales week, with some forced to complete paperwork manually.
Shares in Tata Motors, JLR’s Indian parent company, fell nearly 1% in Mumbai after the cyberattack was disclosed. The company, which employs more than 39,000 people worldwide, reported revenues of nearly £29 billion last year but has faced declining profits and delayed electric vehicle launches.
Cybersecurity specialists noted the seriousness of the company-wide shutdown. Oakley Cox, director at UK firm Darktrace, said, “JLR’s decision to proactively shut down global manufacturing suggests this attack may have been targeting their operational systems, not just customer data. The speed of their response is telling – you don’t typically halt production across multiple sites unless there’s genuine concern about operational impact.”
The nature of the incident has not been disclosed, and no group has been officially linked. However, earlier this year, unconfirmed claims from the Hellcat ransomware gang suggested they had breached JLR systems, though the company did not publicly verify those assertions.
The National Cyber Security Centre has previously warned that the UK is underestimating cyber threats, pointing to recent attacks on Marks & Spencer, the Co-op, and Harrods that disrupted retail operations. JLR has not indicated when production and sales will fully resume.
