Car dealers in Canada and the United States are being impacted by a cyber outage that began on Thursday and is now in its second day, according to the impacted organizations. The disruption occurred at retail technology and software supplier CDK.
On Wednesday, CDK momentarily suspended all of its operations while stating that it was looking into a second breach that had occurred that evening. The business was contacted by CBC News to request further details.
According to spokeswoman Lisa Finney, CDK will not be directly responding to inquiries at this time.
“In partnership with third-party experts, we are assessing the impact and providing regular updates to our customers,” she stated in a press release. “We remain vigilant in our efforts to reinstate our services and get our dealers back to business as usual as quickly as possible.”
The Canadian Automobile Dealers Association’s president and CEO, Tim Reuss, stated that as of Thursday afternoon, “hundreds of dealers” nationwide had been affected.
“At this point in time, there’s no resolution timeline as of yet from CDK,” Reuss stated.
He stated that it is still unknown if any employee or customer data was compromised.
The business offers software that is used to record all kinds of dealership transactions, such as the sale of spare parts, a service appointment, or a new or used car. It is the “central component” of an IT dealer’s business, according to Reuss.
“When that system is affected … a dealer is basically not able to operate in a normal fashion,” he stated.
He pointed out that everything completed on paper in the interim would need to be entered into the system when it is operational again.
Principal and executive vice-president of automotive group Zanchin, Andria Zanchin, stated that the incident exposes “significant vulnerabilities for Canadian dealers.”
“It is evident that companies such as CDK Global need to strengthen their cybersecurity measures and create a better incident response plan as it is crucial for all the Canadian dealers that rely on their services.”
Holman, a privately held auto dealer, added that the disruption had affected its phone system. Investment company Brookfield Business Partners acquired CDK in April 2022 for a cash purchase of $6.41 billion US, making it the final significant publicly traded supplier of software to automakers and dealers.
