Thousands of auto dealerships in the United States and Canada are experiencing disruptions to their operations as a result of cyberattacks on a provider of critical software and data services used in automotive retailing.
The provider, CDK Global, said it was the target of two attacks on Wednesday, prompting the company to shut down its systems to prevent the loss of customer data and allow testing and other measures to restore its services.
“We are assessing the impact and providing regular updates to our customers,” CDK Global said in a statement. “We remain vigilant in our efforts to restore our services and get our dealers back to business as usual as quickly as possible.”
CDK serves more than 15,000 retail establishments. Their dealership management systems store customer records and automate much of the paperwork and data related to the sale and maintenance of cars and trucks.
Dealers said the disruption had slowed sales and forced them to find alternative methods for producing titles, contracts, leases, registration cards and other forms that must be provided to customers, banks and state motor vehicle authorities.
“It's definitely annoying, without a doubt,” said Brian Benstock, general manager and vice president of Paragon Honda in the New York borough of Queens. “But we are still open for business. “We’re still selling cars.”
He said his franchise had other systems to retrieve customer data. “We can produce contracts,” she said. “For customers, it's pretty simple.”
The outage came at a critical time for dealers as they approach the last two weekends of the month, typically a busy time for new car sales. Many are also preparing for July 4 sales and other summer promotions.
Dealers said they were in some cases rewriting contracts by hand or asking customers to wait a few days to receive their vehicles.
They have less leeway to service or repair vehicles, when customers typically expect their cars back within a few hours, but the lack of access to customer data in most cases will not prevent technicians from performing maintenance work.
