Metro Detroit car dealerships say repairs hit hardest by CDK cyberattack
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) - A crippling cyber attack on car dealerships is getting worse. It's shut down sales, financing, and payroll systems.
From sales to accounting, car dealerships are heavily reliant on CDK technology for their daily operations. You might still be able to walk into a dealership while the system is offline, but you might not be able to drive away with a new car.
Cyber security expert David Derigiotis said roughly half of all car dealerships in the U.S. and Canada are feeling the impact of the CDK outage.
"It allows companies to manage inventory, deal with clients, do all sorts of back-end processing work. When you can't do that it brings the business to a standstill, or at least a very slow halt. That's what we're seeing here now with auto dealers," Derigiotis told CBS News Detroit.
Dearborn Village Ford general sales manager Jay Sturtz said they're resorting to good old-fashioned pen and paper while they wait for CDK to come back online. The cyber attack took a toll on repairs more than anything else.
"It has been difficult, more so in service than in sales. They do need to have this information in CDK. We are going to handwriting repair orders. So, we'll just have to, once the system comes back up, we're going to have to put those into the system.
According to Bloomberg, the group who claimed responsibility for hacking the system is asking for tens of millions of dollars that CDK intends to pay.
Ford issued a statement responding to the disruption:
"There is an industry-wide system outage for some dealers who use CDK. This may cause some delays and inconveniences at some dealers and for some customers. However, many Ford and Lincoln customers are able to receive sales and service support due to alternative processes available to our dealers. While a customer's local dealer remains the best place for information about their sales and service needs, they can always contact the Ford Customer Relationship Center at 1-800-392-3673."
Sturtz said CDK technology is involved in running every single department at Village Ford from processing sales to repairs to payroll.
As we roll into the weekend, there's still no timetable for CDK's return to online operations. It's already been offline for a few days, and CDK says it could take several more before it's back online.