Cyberattack Shuts School, Cyber Scam Thwarted, JLR Faces Losses
This is the first edition of the month, and we have curated the top four cyber incidents that you must be well-versed in. Cyber mishaps this week revolved around a data breach at Higham Lane School, a potential cyber scam that was prevented by a hacker, and Brightspeed’s customer data breach incident.
Meanwhile, the unfortunate Jaguar Land Rover case may hit a massive $4 billion loss.
Higham Lane School closed for students and staff after a cyberattack
A recent cyber incident has forced Higham Lane School and Sixth Form to shut down for all its students and staff members. The cyber mishap has jeopardized the entire IT system of the school.
The school authority has confirmed the threat attack last weekend. Since then, the educational institute has taken down email servers, telephone lines, and its central management system.
A series of emails was sent to parents and guardians by Michael Gannon, the headteacher, between January 3 and January 5, 2026. He mentioned the forced shutdown incident as an extremely “difficult decision.”
The school stayed non-operational on Monday and Tuesday. Meanwhile, the forensic experts carried out an extensive investigation.
Both staff and students have been strictly instructed to avoid logging into any school systems, such as SharePoint and Google Classroom.
The cyber mishap has significantly impacted the students in Years 11 and 13 who will be taking the GCSE and A-level examinations.
South-African pharmacy prevented a potential cyber scam— thanks to a hacker!
A family-owned pharmacy in Cape Town recently managed to brush past a potential cyber scam with the help of a hacker. The proactiveness of a cybersecurity forensic investigator, Bruce Malaudzi, saved them from an unfortunate start to the new year.
Bruce had detected a vulnerable server that was prone to ransomware attacks. He was busy hunting for threats using Shodan when he came across this potential cyber threat. Shodan is a popular search engine used by hackers to look for details about any device that has a public IP address.
Bruce worked swiftly and realized that cybercrooks are attempting to target Constantia Pharmacy, situated in Cape Town.
When Bruce tried to contact the pharmacy, the telephone was initially unavailable. But in his second attempt, he managed to connect with the pharmacist on duty and the pharmacy’s owner.
Further, they got in touch with ProHarm, the third party that provides Constantia Pharmacy with the entire management system. The former took swift action and prevented any kind of data breach.
Strong cybersecurity defenses using DMARC, DKIM, and SPF help prevent data breaches and protect digital communications.
Jaguar Land Rover cyber incident may suffer a massive loss of $4 billion in sales
The most talked about cyberattack that targeted Jaguar Land Rover may lead to lost sales worth $4 billion.
Because of the cyber incident dating back to August 2025, JLR’s vehicle shipments nosedived by 43% from October to December 2025 due to IT system disruptions. JLR had to halt global production for the entire month of September. Full-fledged production could be started only by mid-November. As a result, Jaguar Land Rover struggled with deliveries.
Even when production started on a full scale, deliveries got hampered and delayed because of the intricate global distribution network.
While the automobile company has slowly wrapped up the existing Jaguar model, it has also been delaying the launch of the all-new electric version of Jaguar.
