0:02 The British car maker Jagu Land Rover
0:04 has confirmed it will extend its
0:06 shutdown until the 1st of October
0:07 following a cyber attack at the end of
0:10 August. The UK business secretary Peter
0:12 Kyle is due to visit the embattled car
0:14 maker today to discuss getting
0:16 production back online and the impact on
0:18 its supply chain. The stoppage is
0:21 thought to be costing JLR at least 50
0:23 million pounds a week. And explaining
0:26 the impact of this attack is David
0:28 Bailey, professor of business economics
0:29 at the University of Birmingham Business
0:32 School who joined us short time ago.
0:35 It's clearly very very serious uh breach
0:37 of their cyber security which is taking
0:40 a lot of time to unpack and get to grips
0:43 with and remember as well car companies
0:45 are much more complicated than say a
0:47 supermarket. Uh you know we saw M&S and
0:50 co-op attack recently. So getting this
0:51 fixed and getting things started again
0:53 is taking a long time.
0:55 So how much of a strain is this putting
0:57 on those in the supply chain?
1:00 It's huge. I mean JLR itself by the time
1:02 well it says it may restart on the 1 of
1:04 October. It may not do. By then the hit
1:07 to its revenue will be about 2.2 billion
1:08 and a possible hit to its profits of
1:11 over 150 million. Now that has kind of
1:14 cascaded down the supply chain. Orders
1:15 have been cancelled. the further down
1:17 the supply chain you go, we're seeing
1:19 workers being laid off or sent home on
1:21 part pay, companies applying for bank
1:23 loans, and literally running out of
1:24 money. So, I think we're at a kind of
1:27 critical tipping point. The minister is
1:29 in Birmingham today. And what I'd like
1:32 to hear from him is kind of some
1:34 concrete measures that he'll put in
1:36 place to support the supply chain if
1:37 this carries on for much longer.
1:39 Like what? Well, for example, some kind
1:42 of furlow type scheme uh to enable
1:44 workers to stay on the books so that
1:46 they can be kept on and then also some
1:49 sort of loan guarantee uh sort of
1:51 support to enable firms to borrow money
1:54 from banks. That's critical because if
1:57 that doesn't happen and firms go under,
1:59 then when JLR eventually do come to
2:01 restart, they may find they can't get
2:02 the components.
2:05 But British governments and are usually
2:07 fairly handsoff with this sort of thing,
2:08 aren't they? Yes, they are incredibly
2:10 hands-off quite usually. Um, I think
2:12 there's a a kind of issue here though
2:14 that one way or another the government
2:15 is going to face a hit because either
2:17 they put support in to keep the supply
2:19 chain there which means it's going to be
2:21 then in a productive place when JLR
2:23 restarts or workers get laid off and
2:24 it's going to pick up unemployment
2:26 benefit bills. So either way I think the
2:27 government has got to think about what
2:29 it's going to do. Remember as well that
2:31 in other countries like Germany, this
2:33 kind of part-time support for business
2:35 is quite usual and we need something
2:37 like this, I think, to build business
2:39 resilience in these cases.
2:41 Speaking of resilience, what about cyber
2:43 resilience? What do you hope that other
2:45 uh companies looking on and seeing what
2:46 JLR are going through will be doing
2:48 about their security?
2:49 Well, hopefully it'll be a wakeup call
2:52 for business in general to do more about
2:53 cyber security. I was listening to the
2:55 BBC's kind of cyber security
2:56 correspondent this morning talking about
2:58 it being a group of teenagers somewhere
3:01 in a bedroom maybe in the UK or maybe in
3:02 Russia looking for a 10 million pound
3:05 kind of uh ransom fee in Bitcoin. It's
3:06 mindboggling. Sounds like something out
3:08 of a film but sadly it's impacting on
3:11 people's lives and their livelihoods. So
3:13 taking cyber security more seriously I
3:15 think is a key message from this.
3:17 Professor David Bailey from the
3:18 University of Birmingham Business School.
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