Car dealer software bigshot CDK pulls systems offline twice amid 'cyber incident' The vendor behind the software on which nearly 15,000 car dealerships across the US rely says an ongoing "cyber incident" has forced it to pull systems offline for a second time in as many days. CDK Global first shut down its systems in the early hours of June 19 and brought key products such as its Dealer Management System ( …
> the attack being timed to coincide with the US public holiday Juneteenth – June 19
Please don't introduce such Americanisms onto this respectable British tech forum. Also please don't quote Reddit on this respectable tech forum.
“Our APIs use modern technology so there’s one system where you can access everything. Making it easier to exchange data, collaborate and improve customer experience.”
> It's a cyber-attack in the US against US dealerships, so yes, we're going to reference June 19th, a public holiday in the US [triv]
When are the North Africans going to allocate a public holiday in atonement for carrying off my ancestors into slavery.
> Also, we will quote Reddit where relevant: If that's where dealers are discussing things, we'll link to it
Well, its your reputation.
It's not just sales. CDK touts an all-in-one package that can handle every aspect of an auto-industry business - timekeeping, parts ordering, service quote preparation, warranty checks, etc.
So the outage is causing havoc for any CDK-using garage that wants to perform repairs, recalls, tyre/oil changes...
I don't think auto sales are that much of a problem. It's not like car salesmen are now, or ever were, overburdened by the need to find accurate information. If they don't know an answer, they will, as is traditional in that trade, just make something up. Service however, They need to schedule appointments, check inventory, order parts not in stock, create invoices, etc, etc, etc. Hard to do when your data is on an inaccessible computer, and much of your essential communication flows through that same inaccessible computer.
"thousands of dealerships throughout the United States have been left to operate without their usual IT systems"
Oh the joys of SaaS! I still remember a time when we used locally installed applications to run our businesses -- and it actually worked. But I guess it didn't pay the vendors so much.
Nevermind the nightmare that is maintaining local apps, the issue is that pretty much all data is centralised these days and I would imagine that is especially true for a car dealership.So having local isn't going to help you when your data is unavailable.
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