Nearly a third of British manufacturers have been affected by a cyber-attack on their own operations or a company within their supply chain, according to a new survey. The report by MakeUK, a lobby group for British manufacturers, found that 30% of manufacturers experienced a cyber-incident in the past 12 months.
These incidents often led to lost production time and increased costs. Despite the rising risk, only half of the surveyed manufacturers had a plan in place to respond to an attack.
The findings follow almost a year after the JLR cyber-attack, which forced the automotive employer to halt production for weeks. The independent Cyber Monitoring Centre estimated the JLR hack cost the UK economy at least £1.9bn, primarily due to lost output from JLR and its suppliers.
Jonathon Ellison, director of national resilience at the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), emphasised the importance of cybersecurity, stating that "no manufacturer can afford to treat cybersecurity as anything other than a business-critical priority."