How a Cyberattack Can Cripple the Car Industry

It’s easy to take something you use every single day for granted. That’s something that a lot of car dealerships are feeling right now, as one popular automotive dealership software platform has been down for several days due to a cyberattack.

You don’t realize just how critical your line of business app is until it’s suddenly not available and you can’t do the work you used to do. Here’s the story.

CDK Global Outage Brings 15,000 Dealerships to Their Knees

Like most industries, the automotive industry has specific line-of-business applications that help car dealerships and similar entities operate. While there are usually competing products to choose from, moving from one system to another is expensive and time consuming. It involves a migration of all of your data, implementation on all of your systems, configuring your inventory, training your users, etc. 

These platforms tend to provide a whole lot to your operations. Depending on the industry, it might handle your payroll, your customer relationship management, your inventory, your financials, your marketing, and a whole lot more. That’s more or less what CDK Global is, and roughly around 1 in 5 of all of the car dealerships in the United States depend on it.

The outage started on Wednesday, June 19th, after a cyber incident briefly took down CDK’s systems for several hours, and then on Thursday, CDK announced another cybersecurity incident had happened. The service has been offline since (at the time of writing this). 

According to a memo, CDK doesn’t anticipate that most systems will be restored before the end of June, and is urging dealerships to make alternative plans for their month-end financial closing processes.

For most car dealerships who rely on this software, this is a nightmare.

Dealers Can’t Close Deals, Drivers Can’t Register Cars

Imagine going to a few car dealerships with the intention to buy, but 1 in 5 of the dealerships can’t help you. Now imagine picking the car you want, and not being able to legally drive it. CDK Global’s software can allow dealerships to register cars with the state, but depending on the state laws, now customers need to make an appointment with their local DMV/RMV just to legally be allowed to drive their car off the lot. 

The department of motor vehicles isn’t exactly famous for quick turnaround times, so you probably see where I’m getting.

It’s a mess for both the consumer and those coping with the outage at the dealerships.

Who’s at Fault, and How Can We Learn From Them?

It’s easy to look at CDK Global and say “shame on you” but at the time of writing this, it’s unclear how severe the situation really is. Obviously it’s severe enough to allow around 1 in 5 car dealerships to move to pen and paper for potentially two weeks. 

Cyberthreats are an inevitability. Yes, there are measures you can put in place to minimize risk, but the risk is almost never zero. You can’t really blame an entity for getting hit with a cyberattack if they were being proactive, but you can absolutely judge them for how they respond. 

Those are the lessons that every business should learn from this:

1. Cyberattacks can have a massive impact on your business and the lives of those you work with.
2. Cyberattacks can happen to literally any organization, large or small.
3. Proper preparation and proactive prevention can minimize the risk of a cyberattack and reduce the impact.
4. Communication during a cybersecurity incident is critical!

If your business absolutely relies on a particular application (and most businesses tend to!) you should occasionally train and run drills for situations where you don’t have access to it. No software is absolutely infallible, whether you host it in house or in the cloud.

Want to gain control over your IT, and do everything you can to prevent cybersecurity threats? Give the IT experts at BNMC a call today at (978) 482-2020.