The UK government has officially stepped in to help JLR as it looks to restart car production following a cyber attack that has severely affected the firm's operations.
On Tuesday, the Jaguar and Land Rover company said it would attempt to restart production lines from 24 September. No cars have been built globally since the 1 September hack.
A statement from UK trade body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) now confirms the government is helping the effort, as JLR continues to rebuild the internal computer systems that were infiltrated.
As well as aiding moves to restart production, government cyber experts are helping to assess “any impacts on the supply chain”, which workers’ union Unite claimed on Wednesday was at the brink of collapsing.
The SMMT statement said: "The recent cyber incident is having a significant impact on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and on the wider automotive supply chain.
"The government, including government 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 attack on 1 September has left JLR incapacitated. It has led to production shutdowns at all of JLR's global plants, created issues with parts ordering and stifled retailers.
The effect could be costing JLR up to £5 million a day, business economics professor David Bailey told Autocar last week.
Since the cyber attack, the majority of JLR’s employees have been off work, with lost hours being banked.
Union Unite said on Wednesday that employees within the supply chain are being told to apply for Universal Credit as they are moved onto reduced or zero-hours contracts by employers battling to stay afloat.
Earlier reports suggested that some suppliers “will go bust” as a result of the ongoing issues at JLR.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said the union has written to the UK government demanding it set up a furlough scheme to take the pressure off suppliers by supplementing workers’ pay packets while they’re unable to do their jobs.
“Workers in the JLR supply chain must not be made to pay the price for the cyber attack,” said Graham. “It is the government’s responsibility to protect jobs and industries that are a vital part of the economy.”
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I work for a large tech company. We get more than 100,000 hacking attempts PER DAY. I still can't believe M&S and JLR had such poor recovery systems.
Looool! It's your responsibility to implement cybersecurity, ffs. Unbelievable impudence.