- A number of dealerships were knocked out of commission by a cyberattack on CDK Global.
- The firm specializes in software solutions and the incident reportedly impacted around 15,000 dealers.
- Access to key systems has largely been restored, but work is still underway.
Car dealerships are complex beasts that are heavily dependent on technology from two firms that largely fly under the radar: CDK and Reynolds and Reynolds. However, when something goes wrong, it brings dealerships to their knees.
That’s the case today as CBS reports CDK Global was the victim of a cyberattack. This pushed the company to shutdown a number of its systems, which in turn knocked an estimated 15,000 dealerships out of commission.
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That’s a staggering number and the firm has been relatively tight-lipped about the incident. However, a spokesperson told CBS “We are actively investigating a cyber incident. Out of an abundance of caution and concern for our customers, we have shut down most of our systems and are working diligently to get everything up and running as quickly as possible.”
Bleeping Computer reports the attack began on June 18 and continued into the morning of the following day. This reportedly pushed the company to “shut down its IT systems, phones, and applications to prevent the attack’s spread.”
By Wednesday afternoon, access was largely restored including to the all important dealer management system. Automotive News reports the investigation into the incident continues and the firm told them, “We are continuing to conduct extensive tests on all other applications and we will provide updates as we bring those applications back online.” CDK added, “Our first priority is always the security of our customers, and our actions reflect our obligation to them as a trusted partner.”
While the incident appears to be largely resolved, a number of questions remain with the biggest being who was behind the attack and whether or not any sensitive data was accessed. We’ll likely learn those answers in the coming days, but only time will tell.
During the outage, a number of dealership employees took to CDK’s Facebook page to complain about the incident. One person said they couldn’t “get anything done,” while another complained “we’re stuck writing all work orders by hand.”
