Jaguar’s Cyber Shock and What It Means for Business Continuity

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has been hit by a sophisticated cyber-attack, adding to a growing list of UK organisations facing major disruption in recent months. In early September 2025, the automaker was forced to shut down its global IT and manufacturing systems, prompting thousands of factory workers to stay home as plants at Halewood, Solihull, Wolverhampton and even its Slovakia facility ground to a halt.

The timing could not have been worse, coinciding with the critical surge of 75 plate vehicle registrations, one of the industry’s busiest periods. While there is currently no evidence of customer data being stolen, the decision to shut down systems highlights how deeply modern manufacturing depends on digital infrastructure. What begins as an IT breach can quickly ripple through production lines, suppliers and dealer networks, halting the entire ecosystem.

This latest disruption comes just months after Marks & Spencer faced a prolonged outage following a cyber-attack. The retailer’s systems were crippled for nearly 15 weeks, leaving customers without services such as click and collect and forcing the business to absorb significant losses.

Together, these examples point to a troubling trend. Cyber incidents are no longer rare shocks; they are becoming frequent and systemic, with entire sectors disrupted within short spans of time.

A Pattern of Repeated Disruption

The experiences of JLR and M&S are not isolated. They are part of a wider pattern of disruption affecting UK businesses across industries. What makes this trend especially concerning is the variety of causes. Cyber-attacks dominate headlines, but supply chain fragility, climate-related events and regulatory changes have also knocked operations offline.

Recent data reinforces the scale of the problem. More than one in four UK businesses have suffered a cyber-attack in the past year, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Around 27% of organisations reported incidents, with warnings that many others risk drifting into disruption if resilience planning is not prioritised.

In other words, UK businesses are now grappling with continuity crises on multiple fronts. A manufacturing stoppage, a logistics breakdown or a cyber breach can all have the same destabilising effect: operational paralysis and lasting damage to customer trust.

From IT Defences to Enterprise Resilience

For too long, boardrooms have treated business continuity as synonymous with cybersecurity, focusing narrowly on firewalls, backups and malware detection. But resilience today requires a far broader scope.

A modern continuity strategy must account for:

• Supply chain fragility, as seen at JLR, where production was frozen across several plants
  
• Regulatory shocks and energy instability, which can undermine operations overnight
  
• Public trust and customer confidence, which can erode rapidly during outages

By recognising these patterns, organisations can stop treating incidents as one-off events and start preparing for them as part of a wider, repeating trend.

Building Resilience in Practice

Practical continuity strategies should extend across the enterprise:

• Conduct Business Impact Analyses to identify critical dependencies
• Diversify suppliers and systems to reduce reliance on single points of failure
• Cross-train staff so essential roles remain covered during absences
• Test response plans with live simulations that stress test systems and teams
• Manage third-party risks, ensuring vendors and partners meet continuity standards
• Build rapid recovery protocols so systems can be contained and restored quickly

These steps require more than IT investment; they demand leadership commitment and a cultural shift towards resilience.

Why Repeated Disruption Demands a National Response

The UK economy is tightly interconnected, meaning repeated shocks in one sector quickly ripple into others. JLR’s disruption not only halts car production but also affects suppliers, logistics providers and retailers. Similarly, prolonged outages at M&S highlight the vulnerability of consumer-facing businesses to reputational damage.

When these incidents occur with increasing regularity, they no longer look like isolated bad luck but rather a systemic weakness in national business resilience. The trend is clear: disruptions are happening more often, lasting longer and costing more. Yet organisations cannot wait for a systemic fix; resilience must start within the business itself.

Turning Disruption into Resilience

At AJC, we specialise in transforming resilience from theory into practice. We work with organisations to:

• Build continuity frameworks aligned with ISO 22301 and FCA operational resilience expectations
• Tailor resilience strategies to each organisation’s unique risk environment
• Embed resilience into culture so staff are as prepared as systems

The reality is simple: disruption is no longer an exception, it is a trend. With the right preparation, organisations can not only withstand these shocks but turn resilience into a competitive advantage.

Because in today’s environment, the question is not whether disruption will strike again, but how ready you are when it does.

Contact us on 020 7101 4861 or email us at info@ajollyconsulting.co.uk if you think we can help.

Sources:

Jaguar Land Rover staff home for another day as company reels from cyber attack

Jaguar Land Rover manufacturing and retail ‘severely disrupted’ by cyber incident | Jaguar Land Rover | The Guardian

More than 25% of UK businesses hit by cyber-attack in last year, report finds | Business | The Guardian

Image accreditation: Halewood Factory (July 2011). Last accessed on 14th Septemeber 2025. Available here.