Just-in-Time IT: Why Jaguar Land Rover’s Cyberattack Exposes a Global Weakness
Author: TGBarker
When Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) fell victim to a cyberattack in 2025, production lines went silent, dealerships froze, and suppliers across the UK and beyond faced crisis. The company lost millions each week — not because it lacked backups, but because it lacked continuity.
This was not an isolated failure. It was a case study in how fragile modern business has become.
Backups Are Not Continuity
Most businesses will tell you they “have backups.” What they mean is that they can eventually recover their data. That’s not the same as being able to keep operating when disaster strikes.
- Backups: Data copies that take days or weeks to restore.
- Continuity: Segmented, live systems ready to take over immediately.
Outside of banks and cloud providers, few sectors pay for true continuity. The result? When IT goes down, operations grind to a halt.
Why Businesses Run Just-in-Time IT
- Cost pressures — Running parallel systems can double IT budgets. Many executives see it as an expense until disaster happens.
- Complexity — Global ERP and supply chain systems are nearly impossible to mirror in real time.
- Complacency — Shareholders don’t reward resilience until a collapse hits the headlines.
The truth is that most industries are betting against catastrophe — and losing.
Sector Risk vs. Resilience Matrix
| Sector | Risk of JIT-IT Collapse | Typical Resilience Level | Real-World Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automotive Manufacturing | High — ERP + suppliers tightly coupled | Low — Few hot-standby systems | JLR (2025), Toyota (2022) |
| Retail & Logistics | High — centralised ordering/routing | Low–Medium — Cloud backups exist, but ops freeze | Tesco (2021), Maersk (2017) |
| Aviation & Travel | High — legacy crew/schedule systems | Low — Often monolithic, single points of failure | Southwest (2022), BA (2017) |
| Healthcare (Hospitals) | High — outdated IT, 24/7 reliance | Low–Medium — Some mirrored EMR, but patching weak | NHS (2017, 2022), CommonSpirit (2022) |
| Food & Agriculture | High — perishable goods, global supply | Low — Few alternatives if processors stop | JBS (2021) |
| Energy & Utilities | Medium–High — IT/OT convergence risk | Medium — Critical infra has some redundancy, but attacks still paralyse | Colonial Pipeline (2021) |
| Public Services / Local Gov. | Medium–High — legacy, underfunded IT | Low — Slow funding for recovery | Baltimore (2019), Costa Rica (2022) |
| Finance & Banking | Medium — target-rich, heavily attacked | High — Regulators force redundancy + DR sites | Rare total collapse, but cyber heists common |
| Cloud Providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) | Medium — massive attack surface | High — Built-in redundancy, global failover | Outages occur, but not full collapse |
The Bigger Picture
Jaguar Land Rover’s crisis wasn’t a one-off — it was a glimpse of the systemic fragility built into modern business.
- Automakers live and die by their ERPs.
- Retailers can’t sell when central ordering systems fail.
- Hospitals can’t function if medical records are locked.
We’ve built economies on just-in-time supply chains — and now we see they’re underpinned by just-in-time IT.
The question isn’t whether another collapse will come. It’s which sector, and how soon.
