Jaguar Land Rover is continuing to face issues following a devastating cyber attack at the start of the week, with staff told to stay at home.
The iconic British brand has told workers to stay at home after it stopped production at its factories in Merseyside and Coventry.
Jaguar Land Rover reported on September 2 that it had been impacted by a cyber attack, which "severely disrupted" retail and production activities.
While the automaker said it took immediate action to mitigate damage to the company, it is still dealing with the aftereffects of the hack.
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Jaguar Land Rover has advised its staff to stay away from work
|REUTERS/GETTY
Production workers at its Halewood and Solihull sites, in addition to the JLR engine manufacturing plant in Wolverhampton, have been told to stay away until September 9.
A notice sent to staff at Halewood said: "The leadership team has agreed that production associates will be stood down and will have hours banked in line with the corridor agreement.
"All colleagues are required to attend work as normal on Tuesday, September 9, unless informed otherwise."
The incident came at a critical time for the brand since September is historically one of the most successful times of the year for new car sales.
Staff at JLR's Halewood Plant have been told to go home | PAThe so-called "new reg day" ushered in the new "75" identifier tag, although reports suggest Jaguar Land Rover has been unable to register any new vehicles.
A statement from JLR said: "We are now 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."
It is believed that an English-speaking hacking collective was responsible for the hack, with screenshots of the hack being posted on social media.
The same hacking group claimed responsibility for the devastating hack that crippled Marks and Spencer for a number of months, with estimated losses for the brand totalling around £300million.
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Tim Grieveson, CISO at ThingsRecon, pointed to research which suggests that every hour of downtime in the automotive sector could cost upwards of £1.6million.
This could be made far worse when considering the amount of time that the manufacturer has been down, as well as its impact on the essential September sales period.
A spokesperson for the National Crime Agency confirmed that it was aware of an incident with Jaguar Land Rover and was "working with partners to better understand its impact".
Dealers and garages have also reported issues with organising repairs for motorists, with more than one million Jaguar, Land Rover and Range Rover models on the road.
Jaguar Land Rover said it was working to restore its systems as quickly as possible | JLRDray Agha, senior manager of security operations at Huntress, said: "This incident highlights the critical vulnerability of modern manufacturing, where a single IT system attack can halt a multi-billion-pound physical production line, directly impacting sales, especially during a key period like a new registration month.
"Cybercriminals know this, and many leverage the stopped clock of business functions as the leverage they need to force capitulation of ransomware demands.
"While the quick shutdown of systems was a textbook damage limitation tactic that likely prevented a data breach, it underscores the immense recovery challenge companies now face in safely rebooting complex, interconnected operations after an attack."
Mr Agha noted that Jaguar Land Rover could have saved itself from suffering a great deal of damage by acting quickly in an attempt to return to business as soon as possible.