The cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover is much more than a single incident. It highlights the structural vulnerability of modern industrial companies whose IT and OT systems are increasingly converging. Production stoppages, disrupted supply chains and massive cost implications are no longer exceptions, but inherent business risks. It will be crucial to embed resilience as an integral part of corporate architecture – not as a reaction, but as a forward-looking strategy:

“The incident at Jaguar Land Rover paralysed central IT systems as well as Jaguar Land Rover’s global production and logistics, highlighting that Traditional perimeter protection is no longer sufficient to ward off modern threats. Manufacturing companies need a holistic approach that ensures complete transparency and control over their network and access policies – in both IT and OT environments, on-premises and in the cloud.

The lesson is clear: operational resilience must be planned in advance. Companies need to reverse their strategy and adopt a ‘design by resilience’ mentality. This means building cybersecurity into the architecture from the outset. Regular risk assessments, network segmentation and, above all, continuous monitoring of firewall and access policies are crucial to prevent attackers from exploiting blind spots. It is also alarming that recent data shows that 60% of firewalls fail compliance tests with a high risk rating, and 34% even fail at the highest criticality level of these tests. These are not just technical failures, but signs of fundamental governance deficits.

Modern cybersecurity means more than just preventing attacks – it must ensure that companies can quickly resume operations in the event of disruptions and keep their supply chains running. The Jaguar Land Rover case shows that those who do not invest in comprehensive cyber resilience today risk bringing their entire operations to a standstill tomorrow.”

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David Brown is SVP International Business at Firemon. He has 25 years of experience building high-performing teams in enterprise software, AI, cloud, cybersecurity and data management.