South Florida car dealerships scrambling to get cars sold, make repairs after major cyber attack
MIAMI - Some South Florida car dealerships have resorted to going back to pen and paper to conduct their business after a cyber attack.
"I was actually not aware this was happening," said Chris Russell, who walked into Gus Machado Ford, in Hialeah to buy a Mustang. He had no clue a cyberattack had affected a program used by this dealer and thousands more.
"CDK, which is a global company, got hacked," said Vicente Benitez, Vice-President and General Manager of Gus Machado Ford.
CDK's website does not say anything about the origin of the attack, they do say they offer service to 15,000 dealers in the nation.
"Of course, we had to reinvent ourselves. Now, we do it (paperwork) manually like we used to do many, many years ago," said Benitez.
"Manually is typing all the information in the system, manually instead of loading the deal from one system to another system," said Joel Elias, Sales Manager at Gus Machado Ford.
Benitez was asked to address the possible fear of buying a car now because of information possibly being compromised. He said, "I don't think that's a problem. As a matter of fact, I think that's the reason that CDK shut down, they didn't want anybody to get customer information."
CDK's software helps dealerships manage vehicles, sales, financing, repairs and even maintenance.
"Now, it is more time-consuming," said Renso Say, from the service department at Gus Machado Ford. He says they have come up with their own strategy.
"When the customer comes in, we have to go to the car, we take a picture of the VIN number. We have to come back to the computer, so we can type everything manually," said Say.
As far as car sales, "the process still feels fluid, I don't really notice much of a difference," said Russell.
He waited a little bit more to complete his transaction, but he was even compensated.
"If a full tank is on the deal, then we got a deal!" said Russell.
CDK stated in its website, "The process for solution may take a few days." That was posted last week.
The General Manager at Gus Machado Ford hopes the issue will be solved this week.