CDK Global announced on Monday its expected timeline for all dealers to be live on its dealer management system (DMS) by late July 3 or early morning on July 4. This comes after the company, a leading provider of software for car dealerships, experienced a temporary shutdown of all its systems in June due to a cyber incident under investigation.
The restoration process is being carried out in a phased approach, with CDK rapidly bringing dealers back online on the DMS. Additionally, the company has successfully restored its customer care channels and is actively working on reactivating other applications affected by the incident.
Last week, CDK successfully brought online two small dealer groups and one large publicly traded auto retailer as part of its phased reactivation strategy. The outage caused some U.S. auto dealers to resort to manual paperwork, highlighting the reliance of the car industry on technology and software providers like CDK, which serves over 15,000 retail locations in the country.
Industry experts are predicting slower growth in second-quarter U.S. auto sales, attributing the challenges faced by dealers to access critical software during the disruptions at CDK. Jessica Caldwell, Head of Insights at Edmunds, noted that although the impact of these cyber attacks will vary for each dealer, it poses another obstacle for the automotive industry on the road to recovery.
The cyber incident specifically impacted around half of Volkswagen dealers and approximately 60% of Audi dealers in the United States, as reported by Reuters in June. This emphasizes the widespread impact of cybersecurity threats on various segments of the automotive industry.