Thousands of auto dealers across the United States and Canada are experiencing business disruption as a result of cyberattacks on a provider of critical software and data services used in the auto retail trade.
The provider, CDK Global, said it was targeted in 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 return our dealers to business as usual as soon as possible.”
CDK provides services to more than 15,000 retail locations. Dealer management systems store customer records and automate much of the paperwork and data associated with selling and servicing cars and trucks.
Dealers said the outage had slowed sales and forced them to find alternative methods to produce titles, contracts, leases, registration cards and other forms that must be delivered to customers, banks and state motor vehicle authorities.
“It’s definitely annoying, no doubt,” said Brian Benstock, general manager and vice president of Paragon Honda in Queens, New York. “But we are still open for business. We still sell cars.”
He said his franchise had other systems in place to retrieve customer data. “We can produce contracts,” he said. “For customers, it’s pretty seamless.”
The disruption came at a critical time for dealers as they head into the last two weekends of the month, typically a busy time for new car sales. Many are also gearing up for 4th of July sales and other summer deals.
Dealers said they were in some cases reverting to manual contracts or asking customers to wait a few days to pick up their vehicles.
They have less leeway to repair or repair vehicles when customers often expect their cars back within hours, but lack of access to customer data in most cases does not prevent technicians from performing repair work.
