(new: presentation, details and reactions.)

WOLFSBURG (dpa-AFX) - An IT breakdown almost completely paralyzed the VW Group on Wednesday. It was not until Thursday night that the problem could be fixed and production restarted. In politics, voices are already being raised calling for more security in the digital world.

How much will the breakdown cost VW?

VW has not yet provided any concrete information on the costs of the IT breakdown and the extent of the outages. However, car expert Ferdinand Dudenhoffer from the Center Automotive Research (CAR) in Duisburg assumes that the damage will be limited. "I consider the amount to be manageable," he told dpa. After all, he said, production had not even been at a standstill for a day. "The downtime can be made up quickly." Longer delivery times for customers are therefore not to be expected, he added. VW is benefiting from the fact that the problem was solved quickly. Otherwise, it could have been really expensive, warns Stefan Bratzel of the Center of Automotive Management (CAM) in Bergisch Gladbach: "Errors and breakdowns in IT security can quickly cost three-digit million sums and more."

And who pays for it?

That's what technicians and lawyers at both VW and insurers will now be poring over. "Business interruption" is one of the most feared dangers and ranks second only to hacker attacks in the annual "risk barometer" of industrial insurer Allianz Corporate. For such cases, industrial companies take out so-called business interruption insurance policies. Large corporations such as VW are insured by consortia, as the damage can quickly exceed the financial capacity of a single insurer. The experts also try to determine the cause. Technical breakdowns, accidents or hacker attacks usually come into question, sometimes also internal sabotage by disgruntled employees. However, no insurer will provide information on the losses suffered by individual customers.

What do we know about the causes?

VW has not yet provided any precise information on the cause of the disruption. So far, however, there is nothing to suggest that it was an external attack, a spokesman said Thursday. On Thursday night, an IT service provider responsible for the company's networks had still said that anything from a technical glitch to a hacker attack was possible. "You can never rule out a cyber attack," auto expert Dudenhoffer also said. In this particular case, however, he said it was unlikely, if only because VW had managed to get the problem under control in less than 24 hours. In addition, hackers who paralyze companies would usually demand a lottery ticket before releasing the systems again. "And VW wasn't going to pay that quickly."

How can a glitch have global repercussions so quickly?

It's largely due to the increasing networking of sites and centralized control, auto expert Bratzel said. As a result, faults can spread worldwide via the network and then paralyze entire corporations "as if in a domino effect." "If something jams somewhere, it jams everywhere," Dudenhoffer added. "Then all the plants are paralyzed." But turning away from networking is not the answer, he adds. After all, the only way to efficiently control a global production network is to use centralized computing technology. "There's no other way to do it. There can be no turning back."

Has there ever been anything like this before?

Yes. Toyota had to close all of its plants just last March after its domestic supplier Kojima Industries suffered a system failure caused by a cyberattack. And supplier Continental had itself fallen victim to a hack attack in late 2022. Instead of paralyzing operations, however, the attackers at Conti had targeted data. A total of 40 terabytes were captured.

What lessons do companies need to learn from this?

German Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) has already called for greater sensitivity to the issue of network security in light of the incident at VW. "We need security systems here that work," he told broadcasters RTL and ntv. "It must be clear to everyone, digital infrastructures are critical infrastructures." Because, Dudenhoffer warns, the danger of cyberattacks from Russia, for example, is increasing significantly. "That's why it's important to protect against them." And it's not just a question of a company's own IT. Due to the networking with other companies, the protection must also be comprehensive. "This must extend from the supplier to the retailer. Because hackers find gaps everywhere they can penetrate."/fjo/DP/men