https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/19/tech/car-dealership-cdk-cyber-incident-outage/index.html
US and Canadian auto dealerships remained at a near-standstill on Thursday because of a second cyber incident at data provider CDK Global, whose software is used at 15,000 auto dealers – an outage that could last for days, perhaps eating into sales over the first official weekend of summer.
On Wednesday, CDK spokesperson Lisa Finney said in a statement shared with CNN: “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.”
Later that day the company announced that most of the critical computer systems were back online. But Thursday morning, the company sent dealerships another message indicating things had a taken a turn for the worse.
“Late in the evening of June 19, we experienced an additional cyber incident and proactively shut down most of our systems. In partnership with third party experts, we are assessing the impact and providing regular updates to our customers,” CDK said in a statement shared Thursday morning. “We remain vigilant in our efforts to reinstate our services and get our dealers back to business as usual as quickly as possible.”
The company later told dealers the systems could be down for several days, according to two sources briefed on the situation.
CDK operates numerous different products that car dealers use to handle things like keeping records of negotiated deals to scheduling and communicating about service. Not every dealer uses CDK’s products, and even those that do may not use them for everything, but the system shutdown has been a problem for many.
“We have customers coming in today who had deals saved in the system,” said Jeff Ramsey, an executive with Ourisman Auto Group, which is headquartered in Maryland.
To protect customer privacy, customers’ details aren’t written out on a piece of paper that’s just sitting on a desk anymore. Instead, information about deals and customer appointments is kept in a server that’s now impossible for his salespeople to access.
How this affects buying a car now
Ramsey said he understands, though, that CDK is doing what it feels it must to secure this sensitive data. But it’s a major hassle in the meantime and could cost his dealerships some business. Customers who are delayed in closing a sale at one of his dealerships could just find a dealer nearby that’s not having these issues and buy a new vehicle there, instead.
It’s car buying season, so it’s a real concern.