UK’s biggest home defence drill puts spotlight on supply chain cyber risk, says Parcelhero
The government’s announcement of ‘Operation Albiston Shadow’, the UK’s largest home defence exercise in decades, has put supply chain resilience back on the agenda for British businesses, says the home delivery expert Parcelhero.
New analysis of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) latest business survey, carried out by the home delivery specialist Parcelhero, reveals that fears over cyber-attacks disrupting supply chains vary sharply depending on the sector. Some parts of the economy that keep the nation stocked and running are far more worried than others. Parcelhero says retailers are considerably more worried than the transport and logistics firms that actually move their goods.
The analysis comes at a critical time. cabinet office minister Darren Jones told Parliament this month that the multi-day ‘Operation Albiston Shadow’ exercise, planned for 2027, will test the country’s ability to respond to hybrid attacks, including cyber-attacks, sabotage and disinformation, alongside a wider NATO exercise.
As part of the same update, the government confirmed it would proceed with a previously announced public awareness campaign encouraging households to prepare for disruptions to power, water, phone signal, or food supplies. It also newly added cyber-attack risks, including threats to water infrastructure and national data systems, to its National Risk Register.
Parcelhero’s head of consumer research, David Jinks MILT, says: ‘When government is rehearsing its response to hybrid threats, it’s worth asking how ready the businesses behind Britain’s supply chains feel too. The ONS data gives a useful, if uneven, answer.
‘Across all UK businesses, 7.1% currently say they’re concerned about a cyber-attack affecting their supply chains over the next 12 months. But that average hides some real differences by sector.
‘Of the three sectors most central to getting goods onto shelves, wholesale & retail is the most concerned about cyber-attacks disrupting supply chains, with 11.7% citing this worry — well above the all-business average. Manufacturing follows closely at 9.0%. In contrast, transport & storage, the sector that actually moves goods around the country and includes logistics, parcels, haulage and warehousing firms, reports the lowest concern of the three at just 3.3%, below the national average.
‘Nor is this a one-off. Concern about cyber-attacks disrupting supply chains has risen sharply across UK businesses since autumn 2024, when only 4.0% cited it as a worry, climbing to a high of 11.7% in May 2026 before easing to 7.1% now. Wholesale & retail has been at or near the top of that trend for two years, reaching as high as 17.2% in December 2025, its highest reading in the survey.
‘Transport & storage, by contrast, only started registering measurable concern from around mid-2025, before which sample sizes were too small to report reliably, so this is a genuinely newer worry for logistics operators, even if the number of companies registering concern is still the lowest of the three.
‘That gap is worth paying attention to. Retailers are clearly alert to the risk, which is no surprise, given they’re the point where a cyber incident becomes visible to customers first, as empty shelves or failed payments. But transport & storage sits in the middle of the chain connecting manufacturers to retailers, so companies in this sector need to have a greater focus on the impact of a cyber attack on themselves or their partner companies.
‘Britain doesn’t have to imagine what that looks like in practice. In April 2025, M&S and Co-op were both hit by ransomware attacks linked to the same threat actor, within days of each other. M&S lost contactless payments and click & collect over Easter weekend, then suspended online sales altogether for weeks and reverted to pen-and-paper stock tracking, leaving some shelves bare well into the summer. The Cyber Monitoring Centre put the combined financial impact at £270m to £440m, with M&S alone forecasting a hit of around £300m to its annual profit and in-store sales down roughly 15% in the first month.
‘Co-op, targeted by the same attacker in much the same way, came through it comparatively lightly, with in-store sales down around 11% over the same period. Co-op moved quickly to contain the breach and its systems were more segmented, limiting the damage, and it was already regularly rehearsing its crisis response.
‘For any business, whether a manufacturer, retailer or logistics operator, the practical takeaway is straightforward: know which of your suppliers, carriers and systems you depend on, and have a plan for what happens if one of them goes down. That’s true whether the disruption comes from a cyber-attack, a storm or anything else on the government’s risk register.’
‘One certainty is that transport & storage companies partnered with retailers who have strong in-store and online sales will be best placed to weather unpredictable issues such as cyber attacks and global conflicts. As Parcelhero’s own research shows, AI adoption among UK transport & storage firms is accelerating fast, and the businesses embracing these tools now will be best equipped to build the resilience needed to withstand disruption, whether from cyber-attacks or other threats. Parcelhero’s new report, “Putting the AI into supply chAIns”, explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping logistics, warehousing, shipping, freight and the future of global trade. The full report is available at https://www.parcelhero.com/en-gb/resources/ebooks/2030-the-high-street-fights-back