Auto dealers across the U.S. will likely be unavailable for several days following a second major cyberattack on CDK Global, the software provider that hundreds of dealers depend on to run their businesses.
“At this time, we cannot provide an estimated timeframe for resolution and as a result, our dealers’ systems will likely be unavailable for several days,” the corporate said in a note sent to customers on Thursday and seen by Bloomberg.
A CDK spokesman didn’t immediately reply to an email and phone inquiry Thursday concerning the message sent to customers.
CDK notified its customers on Thursday of the incident, which occurred late the previous evening. The company shut down most of its systems again and initially stated that its dealers’ systems “will be unavailable for at least Thursday.”
On a normally busy holiday within the United States, dealers who relied on CDK were unable to make use of its systems to finish transactions, access customer data, schedule appointments or process auto repair orders. The company serves almost 15,000 dealerssupports sales staff within the front office, support staff within the back office in addition to spare parts and repair workshops.
The outage also prolonged to lots of of automobile dealerships in Canada, where retailers relied on pen and paper to conduct business, said Tim Reuss, president of the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association. Those transactions will eventually should be logged digitally once systems are back online, he said.
“This incident will keep us busy for a long time,” he said.
AutoNation Inc. led the way in which amongst publicly traded auto dealership groups on Thursday, losing as much as 4.6 percent in intraday trading. Lithia Motors Inc., Group 1 Automotive Inc. and Sonic Automotive Inc. also fell.
CDK is one in every of a small group of firms, together with Reynolds & Reynolds Co. and Dealertrack, a subsidiary of Cox Automotive, that provide dealer management systems to auto dealers.
Traders reported various degrees of impact on Thursday. Some said in social media posts that they weren’t affected by the hack. Others said they still experienced disruptions despite using DMS systems from CDK’s competitors.
Greg Thornton, chief executive of a dealer group in Frederick, Maryland, said his stores’ CDK customer support software has been down since early Wednesday morning.
“I can only assume that CDK is working hard to resolve the issue,” said Thornton, whose group includes Audi and Volvo businesses. “We have not spoken to them in person or by phone.”
Open Road Auto Group’s 19 dealers in New York and New Jersey use Reynolds & Reynolds but haven’t been in a position to deliver recent cars because the outage began Wednesday, said Michael Morais, president of the dealer group.
That’s because other CDK services outside the first DMS also failed, including one which connects automobile dealerships with state vehicle registration offices for title and registration purposes, he said.
“We are frustrated with CDK because they should take better precautions,” Morais said.
Sam Pack’s Five Star Chevrolet outside Dallas sold 4 vehicles on Wednesday despite the initial power outage, but has needed to adapt, reminiscent of handling some tasks on paper until service is restored, said Alan Brown, the shop’s general manager. While sales staff can present approvals to lenders, the facility outage has blocked other elements of a transaction, reminiscent of obtaining title deeds.
“We’re still doing business,” Brown said. “It’s just not our normal routine.”
CDK has not yet provided a timetable for when its systems could be available again, he said.
The National Automobile Dealers Association said Wednesday it’s actively searching for information from CDK to find out the character and scope of the cyber incident.
CDK was spun off from Automatic Data Processing Inc. in 2014 and purchased by investment firm Brookfield Business Partners in April 2022 in a money deal valued at 6.4 billion US dollars.
