Auto retail · 2024
CDK Global: cyberattack disrupted auto dealerships
Selling cars on paper for two weeks.
What happened
In June 2024, a cyberattack took CDK Global's dealer-management platform offline. Roughly 15,000 dealerships in the US and Canada lost systems used for sales, financing, parts, service and inventory. Many returned to handwritten contracts and manual workarounds until restoration was completed in early July.
The attack was widely associated with the BlackSuit ransomware group. Blockchain analysts traced a payment worth about $25M to a wallet linked to the group, while Anderson Economic Group modelled dealership losses at roughly $1.02B over three weeks. One compromised technology provider interrupted thousands of companies that depended on the same platform.
What would have changed it
A supplier's outage becomes your outage when one platform runs the business. We assess concentration risk, require recovery evidence and prepare workable offline procedures.