British industry is being tested in a way its factory floors were never built to withstand. According to a fresh survey from MakeUK, the lobby group for the nation’s manufacturers, nearly a third (30%) of manufacturers have experienced a cyber-incident over the past twelve months – either directly, or through a breach in a company inside their supply chain. In many cases the fallout was immediate and expensive: lost production time, disrupted orders, and rising remediation costs.

Lessons From JLR: Britain’s Costliest Cyber-Attack

The headline number lands almost exactly a year after the most expensive reminder imaginable. In late 2025, Jaguar Land Rover – Britain’s largest automotive employer – was felled by an attack that forced it to halt production for weeks. The disruption rippled through thousands of suppliers and cost the UK economy an estimated £1.9bn, making it one of the costliest cyber-attacks ever recorded on a British business. MakeUK’s findings suggest JLR was not an outlier but a warning of a broader trend.

Why Readiness Is Lagging Behind Risk

What makes the survey sobering is not just the frequency of attacks but the gap in readiness. Big companies describe feeling under “constant threat”, yet only around half of those surveyed said they had a concrete plan in place to respond when something goes wrong. That split – high exposure, uneven preparation – is precisely the weakness criminal groups exploit. A single unprepared supplier in a chain can become the door into a far larger, better-defended customer.

The Rise of Autonomous, AI-Driven Attacks

The shift in attacker behaviour is the second story buried in the data. Where ransomware used to arrive as a scattershot email blast, today’s campaigns are targeted, patient, and increasingly automated. Some generative-AI systems have now been shown to probe and compromise other businesses autonomously, blurring the line between a scripted exploit and an agent that adapts in real time. For manufacturers running operational technology – the programmable logic controllers and industrial systems on the shop floor – that raises the stakes from data theft to physical downtime.

A Practical Cyber-Hygiene Checklist

There are practical steps any sized firm can take now, and MakeUK’s report is effectively a checklist. Segment operational networks from the corporate IT estate so a phishing click in the office cannot become a shutdown on the line. Enforce multi-factor authentication on every remote-access route. Keep an offline, tested backup that ransomware operators cannot reach. And, critically, write the response plan before the incident – naming who communicates with customers, insurers, and the relevant authorities, and rehearsing it at least annually.

Map and Secure the Supply Chain

The supply-chain dimension deserves its own emphasis. A manufacturer may lock its own doors tightly yet still be reached through a logistics partner, a software vendor, or a managed service provider. Mapping those dependencies and requiring minimum security standards of partners is no longer optional for firms that sit in a critical chain such as automotive or defence.

What Policymakers Should Do Next

For policymakers, the survey is a prompt to keep pressure on. The UK has pushed baseline cyber-hygiene expectations for larger operators, but the long tail of small and medium manufacturers – where most of the jobs and much of the supply chain live – often lacks the in-house expertise to act. Shared incident playbooks, affordable monitoring, and clear reporting routes would close the gap between “under constant threat” and “ready when it lands”.

The lesson of the past year is not that attacks are inevitable, but that being unprepared is a choice. A third of manufacturers have already learned that the rising hacking risk is real. The other two-thirds now have a rare thing in security: a clear, dated warning they can still act on.

Source: Original report. Rewrite for Your News Website.