New Delhi, Oct 22 : A major cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover, the British car manufacturer owned by India's Tata Motors, has cost the UK economy an estimated $2.55 billion (£1.9 billion), according to a report released on Wednesday by the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC).

The attack forced a six-week shutdown of JLR's production, impacting thousands of suppliers and dealerships nationwide, marking it as the most expensive cyber event ever recorded in the UK.

More than 5,000 companies across the UK were affected by the incident, the report said.

The CMC is an independent group made up of experts in cybersecurity, including a former head of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre.

They said the financial damage could have been even worse if JLR had faced longer delays in restarting production after the hack.

The report described this attack as the most costly cyber event ever to hit the UK. Most of the losses came from JLR having to stop making cars, which also affected its many suppliers.

JLR has three factories in Britain that together produce about 1,000 cars every day. Due to the hack, production was shut down for almost six weeks.

JLR finally began to start production again earlier this month. Before the shutdown, the company was losing about 50 million pounds every week.

To help JLR and its suppliers during this difficult time, the British government provided a loan guarantee of 1.5 billion pounds at the end of September.

This cyberattack on JLR was one of several big hacks that hit important British companies this year.

For example, the retailer Marks & Spencer lost around 300 million pounds when its online services were shut down for two months after a breach in April.

The CMC has a system to rate the financial impact of such cybersecurity incidents on British businesses.

They ranked the JLR hack as a Category 3 systemic event, which is on a scale of one to five.

The report said the attack caused a major disruption not only to JLR's manufacturing but also to its supply chain and to car dealerships across the country.

/IANS