Cyber attack on car dealerships

[Chuckanut]

"It's disrupting the entire dealership [industry]," says @GuyDealership's Yossi Levi after a cyberattack hit 15,000 auto dealerships across the country. "Will the industry continue centralizing and consolidating technology? This has been the biggest trend in auto retail."

The above is from the Car Dealership Guy’s blog post

Has anybody been affected by this cyber attack that has hampered the business of so many car dealership businesses?

CDK cyberattack shuts down auto dealerships across the U.S. Here's what to know.

Multiple cyberattacks on software maker CDK Global are causing havoc for thousands of car dealerships across the U.S.

www.cbsnews.com

CDK Global, a company that provides auto dealerships across the U.S. with software for managing sales and other services, was shut down for a third straight day Friday after cyberattacks crippled the platform.

The outage is disrupting roughly 15,000 car sellers that depend on CDK's dealer management software to run their businesses, including vehicle sales. Some dealership employees have resorted to pen and paper to handle transactions, but said most deals had ground to a halt. CDK has not indicated when its systems will be back up and running, but suggested the outage could last several days.

 

[Kings over Queens]

Not me personally, but a buddy was turned away from a dealership because they couldn't finalize the lease.

 

[ls99]

The fun of most of dealers having one central service. Now practicing calligrapy for work orders etc.

 

[RetiredHappy]

The affected dealerships here have shut down the entire offices, no sales and service. We have been trying to get our car serviced and have been told that they were closed. We rescheduled our appointment to Monday but we were told to call at 7am to ensure that they are open before we head in. They told us that they "hope" that their system will be up and running by Monday or Tuesday.

 

[Sunset]

Automation is great !
But:
Companies need to have a plan how to operate if the wonderful software isn't working.

Just a power failure is enough to see issues, be in a grocery store and with a power failure, nobody can buy the food on the shelves.

We aren't buying a car right now so no worries, but if we were selling our second vehicle I'd raise the price by $1K right now.

 

[Koolau]

Everyone and every business needs a back-up to their usual way of doing things. Depending totally on computers/interconnection is pretty much guaranteed to cause problems at some point. Now, especially though YMMV.

 

[EastWest Gal]

We were affected, but because we were paying by check, rather than leasing or financing the car, we were able to complete the purchase, one day late, on Thursday. We selected the car on Tuesday, but ran out of time due to DH's schedule to complete the purchase, and had planned to complete it on Wednesday. By Thursday, the dealership had revamped their "by hand" method for completing sales and we were able to get the car. It took about three hours to complete the process.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

I once sold software to the company that has the service interruption. It was interesting to find that they provide dealerships with every bit of computer technology they need to run their business.... the computers, the software (inventory, sales, marketing, accounting, payroll, etc.), the printers, the network, the cabling etc. Is it a one-stop shop for everything you need to run the dealership. It doesn't surprise me one bit that dealerships cannot operate without them.

 

[Chuckanut]

Apparently one dealer in my area had already stored PDF files of all forms and documents used on the now compromised system. Those combined with a printer and pens are keeping things going.

 

[Zathras]

While that is the majority of dealers, it isn’t all of them.
I would expect the ones that aren’t affected would be advertising that they are open and you can get your car there.