BROADVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio — Dealerships across the U.S. have been left scrambling after CDK Global still hasn't reopened their systems Thursday.
CDK Global provides auto dealers with DMSs or dealer management systems. These systems allow consumers to e-sign for services and produce contracts for repairs and car purchases. The shutdown is impacting 15,000 car dealers across the country, including here in Cleveland.
"In Cuyahoga County, we have 76 new car dealers. So let's call it half of those are on CDK," Lou Vitantonio, the President of the Greater Cleveland Automotive Dealers Association, said.
The hack began Tuesday evening and was first reported by Bleeping Computer, a cybersecurity news site. By Wednesday afternoon, the companies' digital management and retail systems had been restored. However, by Wednesday evening, another cyber incident led to the systems being shut down once again.
"Late in the evening of June 19, we experienced an additional cyber incident and proactively shut down most of our systems," announced Lisa Finney, CDK Global's senior manager of external communications. "In partnership with third party experts we are assessing the impact and providing regular updates to our customers. We remain vigilant in our efforts to reinstate our services and get our dealers back to business as usual as quickly as possible."
For now, dealerships are expected to print and manually fill out these forms. For Vitantonio, this isn't anything new. "...Before we had all these computers, we did a lot of stuff on paper," Vitantonio said. "At some point, if the systems are back up, we'll have to input them but for now, document it and put it away in a safe place."
Cybersecurity attacks and ransomware are not foreign to Cleveland. The city of Cleveland made it clear they would not be negotiating with the cyberattackers, which shut down critical services within City Hall for the last few weeks.
RELATED: 'We have no intent of paying the ransom': Cleveland says it will not negotiate with cyberattackers
It is currently unclear when CDK's systems will be back online. CDK shared that systems would be shut down all day Thursday. It is also unknown the level of data they have. However, Vitantonio believes this may encourage businesses to do more things on pen and paper.
"Maybe it's going to be a learning experience to say, 'hey listen, maybe there's some old school ways to protect data versus having it being compromised from maybe another country.' If this stuff is local, you can't get to it," Vitantonio said.
