Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover begins phased IT restart after cyber-attack

Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has begun a phased restart of its IT operations following a cyber-attack that has brought the British luxury carmaker's production to a complete halt earlier this month.

In an update issued on Thursday, JLR said it is working to clear the "backlog of payments" to its suppliers by increasing its processing capacity for invoicing.

Meanwhile, production at its factories in Merseyside, north-west England, and Solihull in the West Midlands, as well as facilities around the world, including India, Slovakia and China, remain at a standstill until the "foundational work" of the recovery programme is completed.

"As part of the controlled, phased restart of our operations, we have informed colleagues, suppliers and retail partners that sections of our digital estate are now up and running," the JLR statement said.

"The foundational work of our recovery programme is firmly underway. We have significantly increased IT processing capacity for invoicing. We are now working to clear the backlog of payments to our suppliers as quickly as we can," it said.

Britain's largest car manufacturer said the Global Parts Logistics Centre, which supplies parts to distribution centres for its retail partners in the UK and around the world, is returning to "full operations".

"This will enable our retail partners to continue to service our clients' vehicles and keep our customers mobile. The financial system we use to process the wholesale of vehicles has been brought back online, and we are able to sell and register vehicles for our clients faster, delivering important cash flow," it added.

JLR said its teams continue to work around the clock alongside cybersecurity specialists, the UK government's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and law enforcement to ensure the restart of full operations takes place in a "safe and secure manner" following a "difficult time for all connected with JLR".

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the BBC that the government was "working 24/7" on a support package for suppliers amid growing concerns among small businesses through a prolonged production shutdown.

"I am acutely aware of the urgency of the situation and the difficulties that many of these companies are inevitably finding themselves in, through no fault of course of their own," said Starmer.

The production shutdown, nearing a month, is expected to cost JLR tens of millions of pounds a day in lost revenue and has raised major concerns for the company and jobs in the supply chain. More than 33,000 people are directly employed with JLR in the UK, across assembly lines at its factories, with an estimated 2,00,000 employed by hundreds of companies in the supply chain.

The government's cyber experts are in contact with the company to support the task of restoring production operations, and are working closely with JLR to understand any impacts on the supply chain, the UK's Department for Business and Trade (DBT) said in a statement after a meeting with the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) recently.

Trade union workers have since appealed to the government to step in with financial support, including a furlough scheme, while the company and its supply chain cope with the extended production pause.

A group calling itself Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters is believed to have claimed responsibility for the hack. It was also behind a number of high-profile attacks on UK retailers this year, including Marks & Spencer and Co-op.