Tata Motors owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has been hit by a cyber-attack that has severely disrupted its retail and production activities.

In a statement, the company said it has taken ‘immediate action to mitigate its impact by proactively shutting down our systems’.

Reports says the attack started on Sunday, ahead of the start of September which sees the change to new year-identifier numbers on the standard issue registration plates of new cars sold. It’s a major marketing and promotional opportunity for manufacturers with a higher proportion of annual sales in those two months of the year (March and September) when the registration plates change with the new standard numbers.

The BBC reported that the attack was detected while in progress and that the company acted quickly to shut down IT systems that could be impacted.

JLR’s statement – issued 2 September – said that it is now ‘working at pace to restart our global applications in a controlled manner’.

The statement added that, ‘there is no evidence any customer data has been stolen but our retail and production activities have been severely disrupted.’