CDK Global alerted its customers the cyberattack that began June 19 will idle its dealership management system in the U.S. and Canada “likely for several days.”
Steve Chipman, CEO of the Birchwood Auto Group in Winnipeg, said CDK has warned his staff about fraudsters phoning affected dealerships posing as CDK tech support and asking for critical and confidential information about the dealership in an effort to hack even further. The CDK cyberattack shutdown has potentially far-reaching implications for auto retail franchises, according to a new report from Seaport Research Partners.
Ford Motor Co., in a statement June 20, urged customers to work with their dealerships on"alternative processes" during the outage. “We're kind of going back to old-school pen and paper and we're finding other systems to do some of the things that we do with the CDK products, as well as just manual processes to continue to serve our customers,” Szott said. “We're going to have a little bit of paperwork catch-up to do when we do come back online.”
Reynolds and Reynolds Inc., another key DMS provider and CDK competitor, said the company continues to pay close attention to cybersecurity, in general, especially after the latest attacks. “The prolonging of CDK’s systems disruption announced is not surprising. Skilled cybercriminals often use sophisticated tools and methods to penetrate deep into their target computer systems,” Nachbahr said. “The attacker’s methods can be difficult to trace, detect and neutralize.”
The temporary DMS shutdown had dealerships scrambling to continue selling cars and servicing vehicles. But many said business was not interrupted much.